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Silicon Valley Named No. 2 Market for Data Centers

Silicon Valley is the No. 2 market in the country for data centers, tied with Singapore and behind Northern Virginia according to a study by real estate services firm Cushman & Wakefield.

The 2022 Global Data Center Market Comparison is the third edition of this annual study which identifies and ranks the top data center markets globally and covers key emerging trends in the sector. For 2022, this report has been expanded to 55 global markets, including 1,333 data centers.

According to Cushman & Wakefield, Silicon Valley ranks high despite the lack of available land for construction while Singapore has had a moratorium on data center construction.

“The changes that began throughout 2020 with companies and government agencies alike moving to the cloud or determining their hybrid IT strategy became permanent during 2021,” said Kevin Imboden, Cushman & Wakefield’s Director of Research for the Data Center Advisory Group. “Major cloud service providers continue to battle for market share in large and small markets alike, with an ever-growing number of markets becoming hubs.”

The study shows that construction totals continue to grow globally, with 4.1 gigawatts (GW) currently underway in the markets covered, up from 2.9 GW in the previous study and 1.6 GW in the year before that. The largest clients continue to require larger builds, with 100 megawatt campuses becoming increasingly common.

Cushman & Wakefield assessed data center markets across the globe within 13 different categories, including fiber connectivity, market size, cloud availability, and more to determine the top overall markets as well as the top performers in each of the 13 categories.

Top 10 Data Center Markets

1. Northern Virginia

7. Phoenix

2. Silicon Valley*

8. Dallas

2. Singapore*

9. Sydney

4. Chicago*

10. Seattle*

4. Atlanta*

10. Portland*

6. Hong Kong

* Denotes a tie

10 Data Center Markets to Watch

1. Cape Town

6. Istanbul

2. Moscow

7. Hyderabad

3. Athens

8. Bangkok

4. Abu Dhabi

9. Auckland

5. Vienna

10. Mombasa

“Today, many of the hyperscalers that dominate cloud, network and internet services can enter a new or relatively immature market and simply begin a major build. This shift has led to increases in market size,” said Imboden.