Video from the IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Colocation and Interconnection Services 2019-2020 Vendor Assessment

No matter size or industry, businesses now exist in a new reality. Digital transformation is no longer a competitive advantage, but a critical means for business survival. 78 percent of businesses surveyed said that achieving digital transformation will become critical to their organizations within the next two years.¹ And that’s because digital transformation (DX) changes everything—on exponential levels. DX is 10x faster, 300x greater in scale, and yields 3000x bigger impact than the Industrial Revolution.²

By 2022, more than 70% of enterprise-generated data will be created and processed outside the data center or cloud.³ Because DX increases data distribution, every connection becomes a vulnerability point. This impacts the c-suite as much as the consumer. Companies must solve for digital transformation in order to survive. To do so, they must optimize how they collect, store, and act on data.

At Digital Realty, we provide the trusted foundation for the digital world with a flexible, global data center platform to optimize data exchange so that companies can store, share, and access data, grow revenue and allow customers to add digital capabilities locally and access new markets globally. Wherever our customers are in their DX journey, we’re ready to help them respond rapidly to the changing demands for access to data.

The video below highlights the core of our business and shares why we’ve been positioned as a leader in the IDC MarketScape 2019-2020 Vendor Assessment for Worldwide Colocation and Interconnection Services. To learn more, you can access the report excerpt here.

Video transcript included below:

Hello, I'm Courtney Munroe, Group Vice President of Worldwide Telecommunications Research at IDC. This video will briefly discuss key research findings from our IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Colocation and Interconnection Services 2019–2020 Vendor Assessment study of major colocation and interconnection providers around the world, including a company profile of Digital Realty Trust. I'll also offer criteria for when to consider vendors like Digital Realty Trust.

Market Overview

IDC defines colocation and interconnection services as a customer's use of a third-party's data center facilities in which the customer operates its own servers/storage systems, network equipment, and other types of infrastructure.

Over the past 12 months, the colocation and interconnection sector has experienced steady growth, driven by several key trends:

• There’s hyperscale demand for third-party facilities. Demand for space and power in the key technology corridors in Northern Virginia, New York, Los Angeles, and Atlanta, for example, continues unabated. Demand has also extended to second-tier cities and will fuel a wave of new construction in 2020.
• The consolidation and downsizing of enterprise data centers continues to push traffic to colocation providers. While enterprises are migrating workloads to public cloud environments, they also need consulting and managed cloud services provided by colocation providers.
• Ancillary services like access to virtualized workloads, security services, and on-demand server capabilities will become increasingly important. The key to provider success will be the ability to offer the most efficient data centers that leverage highly automated processes and fortress-like security environments.

Digital Realty Trust Profile

According to IDC analysis and buyer perception, Digital Realty Trust is an IDC MarketScape Leader for colocation and interconnection services worldwide.

Digital Realty was established as a REIT in 2004 with 21 properties in North America. Over the ensuing years, the company expanded to Europe and the Asia/Pacific region. The Telx acquisition in 2015 was a pivotal move that launched into the retail colocation and interconnection segment. Over the past two years, the company has added major assets with strategic acquisitions and alliances in Europe, Japan, and Brazil. Digital Realty now has 210 data centers in 36 metro markets across 15 countries on 5 continents. The company is the second-largest data center provider in the world.

Strengths

Digital Realty’s strengths are its ubiquitous North American coverage, where it built its success on rigorous facilities deployment, management, and operations processes, as well as the ability to negotiate with critical infrastructure providers. As a wholesale colocation provider, Digital Realty supports hyperscale customers and launched PlatformDIGITAL, providing a global scalable platform to enable digital transformation of Enterprises in a consistent modular basis.

Challenges

The biggest challenge for Digital Realty will be to prove it can offer a seamless global infrastructure that can scale more cost effectively than any provider. The company is also striving to be a global retail and interconnection platform. Only time will tell whether it can offer a more seamless and cost-effective portfolio in the Americas.

When to Consider Digital Realty

Digital Realty has implemented a strong road map for both hyperscale entities and global geographically distributed enterprises. The company can provide gobs of wholesale space and power, as well as required foundations to enable enterprise digital-ready foundation including networking, an interconnection platform, and analytical and data management tools to facilitate the establishment of a seamless global platform.

Sources:

1. MIT SLOAN. The Digital Advantage: How digital leaders outperform their peers in every industry
2. Thomas Siebel, “Digital Transformation – Survive and Thrive in the Era of Mass Extinction.” Rosetta Books 2019.
3. Gartner. Infrastructure is Everywhere: The Evolution of Data centers. 2019