In today’s digital economy, public cloud service providers, enterprises, and governments find themselves increasingly reliant on best-in-class data centers and digital infrastructure. Now, the snowballing need for advanced data storage, processing, cooling, and network connectivity is driving businesses to outsource their IT infrastructure to colocation providers across hyperscale, retail, and edge segments. Moreover, as customers strive to transform siloed data center environments into flexible, dynamic, and decentralized IT ecosystems of the future, they find themselves compelled to re-evaluate strategies for data center location, design, operations, security, and management.
This is amplifying competitive intensity, pushing providers to sharpen their focus on industry best practices, hyperscale infrastructure, edge strategies, third-party certifications, sustainability initiatives, and disruptive technologies to maximize product/service differentiation. Now, competitive benchmarking is crucial for data centers and colocation services as it enables providers to better understand industry dynamics, evaluate their performance against industry peers, and refine their growth pipelines to accelerate innovation. It also helps them understand changing customer expectations and align their solution portfolios to meet or exceed these expectations.
How Will Competitive Benchmarking Boost Your Innovation and Growth Potential?
In the fiercely competitive data center colocation services ecosystem, providers are doubling down on scalable, top-tier data center facilities to achieve their growth goals. Comprehensive competitive analysis across the provider ecosystem is poised to act as a strategic growth catalyst, allowing industry incumbents to:
- Execute collaborative partnerships with the right ecosystem players, while thwarting the limitations of their current data center designs.
- Integrate disruptive technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and Big Data to implement future-proof data center strategies, thereby optimizing energy consumption, cooling, security, and workload management.
- Align data center architecture to deliver unique value propositions that effectively support evolving customer needs/workloads through advanced data center infrastructure management (DCIM).
- Capitalize on new opportunities that maximize strategic portfolio differentiation, leveraging high-density racks, modular designs, carrier-neutral growth strategies, generative AI (GenAI), and sustainable value propositions.
- Identify areas of strength and improvement to drive data center innovation, augment operational efficiencies, and enhance customer experience (CX), leveraging industry best practices.
- Pivot data center location and expansion plans, focusing on new secondary and tertiary geographies with higher land and power availability.
Are your teams equipped with the right competitive benchmarking tools and frameworks to implement best practices in data centers and colocation services?
Frost RadarTM: Your Guide to Acing the Data Center and Colocation Services Transformation
Considering the benefits listed above, Frost Radar™ emerges as an ideal partner for your competitive benchmarking strategies, analyzing companies that are best positioned to take advantage of emerging growth opportunities in the data centers and colocation services ecosystem. Leveraging the parameters listed below, this robust analytical tool evaluates providers across two key indices:
- The Growth Index measures company performance using parameters like revenue growth, growth pipeline, vision and strategy, sales and customer experience, and industry penetration rates.
- The Innovation Index measures the ability to develop products/services/solutions with a clear understanding of ecosystemic transformation, leveraging parameters like innovation scalability, research and development, product portfolio, megatrend leverage, and customer alignment.
What strategies will help your organization capitalize on emerging megatrends to thwart growth barriers in the data centers industry?
Measuring The Potential of Strategic Alliances in The Data Center Ecosystem
Frost Radar™: Data Center Colocation Services in North America, 2023
The data center colocation services industry is experiencing heightened competition, particularly in North America. Now, the rising demand for colocation services fueled by hyperscale public cloud services, digital media, and financial sectors is pushing providers to leverage AI, ML, and the Internet of Things (IoT) to maximize operational efficiencies. Additionally, carrier-neutrality is becoming a pre-requisite for customers in favor of increased network flexibility. Further, providers feel the pressure to enhance value propositions with environmentally sustainable practices, leveraging renewable energy and energy-efficient designs to reduce carbon footprints and operational costs. This underscores the shift towards greener, more agile data center solutions that meet evolving customer demands.
From more than 150 data center colocation service providers in North America, Frost & Sullivan has identified the top 10 that exhibit exceptional growth and innovation. Download this Frost RadarTM for comprehensive intelligence on these companies, spanning competitive strategies, best practices, growth/innovation metrices, technology differentiators, and strategic partnerships.
Is your leadership committee prepared to capitalize on strategic partnerships and coopetition in the data centers ecosystem to maximize solution differentiation?
About Frost & Sullivan
Frost & Sullivan, the growth pipeline company, enables clients to accelerate growth and achieve best-in-class industry positioning in terms of innovation and leadership. The company’s ‘Growth Pipeline-as-a-Service’ provides corporate management teams with transformational strategies and best-practice models that catalyze growth opportunity generation, evaluation, and implementation. Let us coach you on your transformational journey, while we actively support you in fostering collaborative initiatives within the global data centers and colocation services ecosystem. This journey is fueled by four powerful components, ensuring your success in navigating dynamic business and industry landscapes.
- Schedule a Growth Dialog with our team to dive deeper into transformational strategies and explore specific needs within your company.
- Become a Frost Growth Expert in your area of specialization and share your expertise and passion with the community through our think tanks.
- Join Frost & Sullivan’s Growth Council and become an integral member of a dynamic community focused on identifying growth opportunities and addressing critical challenges that influence industries.
- Designate your company as a Companies to Action to maximize your exposure to investors, new M&A opportunities, and other growth prospects.
