Continual high volumes of data creation worldwide have led to increased data centre investments, boosting the need for power and cooling solutions that are environmentally friendly, highly efficient, and reduce the overall cost of ownership.
Frost & Sullivan finds that investments from technology and industrial firms in the next-generation enterprise, cloud, and co-location data centres will accelerate the growth of the global data centre infrastructure solutions (DCIS) market.
Continual high volumes of data creation worldwide have led to increased data centre investments, boosting the need for power and cooling solutions that are environmentally friendly, highly efficient, and reduce the overall cost of ownership.
Despite companies reducing construction activities during COVID-19, the industry will witness significant growth in 2021 due to pent-up demand. The total investment in DCIS is expected to reach $26.15 billion by 2025 from $16.73 billion in 2019, up at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7.7%. Technology and telecommunication firms from the United States and China will continue their robust expenditure during the next decade to dominate the data centre space.
“Data creation is also expected to occur at a faster pace, as 5G will enable activities such as augmented and virtual reality, smart sensor technology, and advanced mobile video and gaming, all of which drive data traffic. The presence of microdata centres in the form of multi-access edge computing (MEC) sites within the 5G networks will bring data processing and storage close to the customer end,” said Manoj Shankar, Energy & Environment research analyst at Frost & Sullivan.
He cautioned however that these MEC sites will have increased power requirements, which lead to the development of innovative power and cooling solutions that cater to the needs of 5G networks, thereby driving micro and modular infrastructure development.
Shankar added: “The demand for more efficient infrastructure solutions to process data, along with cooling and rack-based products, will lead the DCIS market. Uninterrupted power supply (UPS) and generators will also feature prominently as a data centre backup power source as companies seek to reduce downtime, hence deploying multiple backup power solutions.”
What needs to be done
With the increase in connected devices and the advent of 5G, new edge data centres need to be developed, presenting tremendous growth prospects for DCIS market participants, including:
Connecting with other suppliers to introduce new products that provide customers with a wide variety of options that cater to their different needs.
Opening subsidiaries in new regions in collaboration with data centre technology providers that are setting up new data centres to gain market access.
Partnering with global telecom operators to get direct access to edge data centres, understand the technology, and field test new products.
Focusing on penetrating the product replacement market as companies can offer new, more efficient solutions that cater to the modern data centre’s varied demands.
