From cross connects to PUE, the data center industry is packed with technical jargon.
Today, we’re breaking down 13 key colocation terms. Whether you're new to the field or just need a refresher, this simple glossary can help.
What makes a city a hub? And what makes a hub healthy?
Before we answer these questions, we must acknowledge that the interconnection market is not a homogeneous thing. It's an ecosystem comprised of numerous critically interdependent parts, much like a body or a machine.
In November, we unveiled our new Market Connectivity Score (MCS) and dropped our first public rankings of the top ten most connected and fastest-growing cities in the world.
Because we update the MCS quarterly, it's time to see how those rankings have changed.
ICYMI: we recently launched a dynamic new tool called the Market Connectivity Score (MCS).
The MCS is our answer to the question “Where is the next big hub going to be?” and pulls from our wide array of research areas to evaluate the health of more than 3,000 metropolitan markets worldwide.
Today, let's take a brief look at three of the markets highlighted in the MCS: Frankfurt, Singapore, and São Paulo.
Our Data Center Research Service estimates that there are 24 metropolitan markets that have more than 1 million square feet of operational data center capacity and four-year CAGR of at least 10%.
Nine of those 24 markets are in Asia and seven are in Europe. Even more extraordinary—four of the Asian markets are in India alone.
The data center market is in the midst of an unprecedented shift that started—publicly at least—five years ago with the announced moratoria on new development in Singapore and Frankfurt. Those regulatory interventions highlighted the challenges the industry faces in securing sufficient power.
Since then, it turned out that data centers would need much more power than had been realized—just at a time when regulators and community organizations were growing increasingly critical of the sector's existing demand.
Our Data Center Research Service estimates that, as of 2024, colocation operators in the top ten data center markets by MW consume about 13 gigawatts (GW) of power.
That's enough power to generate electricity for roughly 10 million homes—or, in this case, only about 1,000 commercial data centers!
Many of the world’s top data center markets face issues such as rising energy costs, connectivity, and in some cases, moratoriums on new data center buildouts.
To help decision-makers navigate these challenges and prepare for the future, we’ve launched the Market Connectivity Score (MCS), a dynamic tool that measures current and potential connectivity and data center market size for 3,000 cities worldwide.
As of Q4 2024, the MCS ranks Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia as the fastest-growing city for near-future connectivity infrastructure growth.
To many people, the concepts of global network infrastructure and bandwidth markets are difficult to grasp. But to those who follow this sector, it's one of the most fundamental building blocks of the global economy.
If you haven't heard of TeleGeography’s Transport Networks Research Service, it's one of our most popular research subscriptions. In short, this tool assesses the state of the global telecom capacity market—and we just finished updating it with tons of new data and analysis.
So now is the perfect time for us to answer the question: what's fueling the changes we see in the global bandwidth market?
When it comes to the nature of exploration, there are typically a number of underlying forces at play, some positive and some negative.
The “pioneering spirit” could be inspired by the excitement of new opportunities, or by the pressure of existing difficulties.
The data center market happens to be dealing with both of those sentiments right now, with several factors driving it to new places.
