New data from Synergy shows that three APAC countries, China (Beijing and Shanghai), Japan, and Singapore, are among the world's top 20 locations for hyperscale data centres. The data also revealed that just twenty state or metro markets account for 62% of the world's current hyperscale data center capacity, with Northern Virginia and the Greater Beijing Area alone making up 22%.
Europe and the APAC region feature more prominently in the following twenty largest state or metro markets, accounting for another 18%. Synergy predicts that the US and China will remain on top, while Malaysia, India, and Spain will become more prominent locations for hyperscale data centres.
Hyperscale locations
John Dinsdale, a chief analyst at Synergy Research Group, explained that various factors influence the choice of location for hyperscale infrastructure, such as proximity to customers, availability and cost of real estate, availability and cost of power, networking infrastructure, ease of doing business, local financial incentives, political stability, and minimising the impact of natural hazards.
"When you weigh up those factors, it tends to mitigate against some of the world's biggest economic hubs, like London and New York, while favoring sparsely populated US states like Oregon, Iowa, and Nebraska. That makes for a different mix of leading markets compared to retail colocation data centres, which hyperscale companies often use to house their edge-oriented infrastructure," he explained.
Dinsdale added that while the general factors for choosing a location will remain the same, the high growth in emerging markets in parts of Southeast Asia and Latin America will play a pivotal role in driving the change in the mix of top markets.
