Who owns datacentres & why it matters?

Do you know who are the biggest owners of datacentres around the world? 

4 biggest owners of datacentres are the following companies:

🏅 Meta

🏅 Amazon

🏅 Google

🏅 Microsoft 

Does this surprise you at all? 

And YES - that is also the #cloud ☁️.

Public cloud is a distributed networks of datacentres. 

💻 How it all started 💻 

First ever datacentre was "invented" to house and provide extra security & secrecy to the ENIAC (was the first programmable, electronic, general-purpose digital computer) at the University of Pennsylvania. Additional facilities were built at West Point, the Pentagon, and CIA headquarters in the 1950s. 

In the early years of the internet expansion mobile operators and national carriers were the ones building datacentres to house their own telecom and then IT equipment and later to rent the servers/spaces to their business customers slowly growing sizes of the facilities and power capacity needed to keep them running. 

🗝️ Datacentres owners today 🗝️ 

Biggest cloud providers tend to build and fully own some of their x-scale datacentres or they lease entire datacentres from DC operators. 

According to recent research the trend is moving in the direction of owning less and leasing more capacity by these biggest players. This does make sense as it allows them to concentrate on their core business & products and rather than put energy and resources into becoming datacentre construction and managing companies. 

🏢 REITs 🏢 

Datacentre operators and owners offering the biggest portfolio of facilities and services are often what we call REITs (Real Esate Investment Trusts) i.e. companies that acquire and develop its datacentres creating giant real estate portfolios not to resell them but to operate and expand. 

REITs need to distribute 90% of its taxable income to shareholders annually in form of dividend and by doing so they do not pay income tax. This makes them very attractive to institutional and individual investors and allows them to grow and expand even more with the invested money. $$$ 

Two biggest datacentre REITs are Equinix & Digital Realty each of them with +200 datacentres in their portfolio and operating in multiple countries across the world. 

The world of hashtag#datacentre has been consolidating significantly in the recent years creating bigger and bigger companies but have seen many new players starting in the industry from scratch. A thriller journey that is not giving any signs of slowing down. ☄️ 

I wonder who you thought were biggest owners of commercial datacentres?

#REITs #Datacentres #realestateinvetstmenttrust