Global figure of hyperscale data centers 2015-2021

Since 2015, the number of hyperscale data centers has more than doubled. The number of hyperscale data centers worldwide reached 700 by the end of 2021.

What are data centers?

Data centers are buildings dedicated to house computer systems. As increasingly sophisticated enterprise applications emerge, the growth in data being generated demands more data center capacity. To meet this demand, hyperscalers’ CAPEX is continually increasing, with a large share of it targeted directly at data centers. It is therefore not surprising that a large amount of the servers being sold are not those of enterprises and are instead going into cloud providers' data centers.

Where are most data centers located?

Most hyperscale data centers are located in the United States with a share of 39 percent of the global total. China and Japan take the second and third place, respectively. Providers including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud continue to build data centers in different regions around the world to enlarge their global infrastructure. This increases connectivity and compensates for downtime in availability zones in case of an incident.