Now's the Best Time to Be a Data Center Provider

As we find ourselves on the cusp of 2022, I think we can all say we’ll be happy to have 2021 in the rearview mirror. Yes, I know we said the same thing last year. Even though the picture remains a little muddled, doesn’t it appear that all the planets are aligning to make 2022 remind us of those heady days of 2018?

For those of you who feel four years is the equivalent of the distant past — and, who can blame you? — let’s take a moment to remember where things stood in the penultimate year of the teens. First, the toy your kid had to have for Christmas was available on a store shelf and not on a stalled container ship somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, the only mask debate was over what you and/or your offspring were going to wear for Halloween, getting jabbed only happened inside a boxing ring, and “going to the office” required you to remember to wear pants.

From the standpoint of the data center business, things were good. Northern Virginia was basking in its status as the data center epicenter of Earth, the major cloud providers were gobbling up capacity faster than Joey Chestnut at an all-you-can-eat buffet, new money was coming in from a variety of investment companies looking to jump into the pool, and everyone agreed the edge was the next frontier, even if no one could agree on exactly what it was. Ah ... those were the good times.

As any economist will tell you, there are winners and losers in every situation, and the pandemic was undeniably a situation — spelled with a capital “S". For those of us in the data center industry, the COVID era may eventually come to be referred to as the “salad days.” Let’s face it, spending quality time with the family, watching “Tiger King,” and logging onto a Zoom meeting were really all euphemisms for, “If it ain’t on the web, I’m not interested.” The end result of this sociological phenomenon has been a seemingly insatiable need for compute and storage capacity across the globe.

In terms of internet-driven applications and communications, “more” seems to be the term best describing the climate for data center providers entering 2022. However, in the words of Peter Parker’s Uncle Ben, “With great power comes great responsibility,” and, for providers, this means achieving levels of innovation beyond what we’ve done in the past. The demand to deliver facilities bigger, faster, cheaper, and greener in an ever-expanding list of global locations will impact every element of the business from the criteria we use to select new sites to the materials we use to build them. I think all of these elements will combine to make 2022 a challenging and exciting time to be in the data center industry.

On a macro level, one could say we’re limping, rather than sprinting, out of 2021. For those of you who choose to take this pessimistic attitude, I can’t guarantee junior is going to find exactly what he wants under the tree this year, or that pants don’t become a regular part of your wardrobe, but I still feel we have every reason to be optimistic. I think the New Year will prove there has never been a better time to be a data center provider. Who knows, next year might even usher in an edge definition we can all rally around, but, that’s probably asking a little too much.