Credit: STT GDC
The Asia Pacific (APAC) region is set to overtake North America (NA) to become the largest regional colocation market by 2022, despite being labelled as “fragmented”.
This is according to analyst firm Synergy Research Group, which claimed that the growth in the APAC market is occurring faster than in NA and will continue to do so for the next five years.
SRG’s prediction comes despite it referring to the colocation market in APAC as “fragmented”, claiming that a wide range of colocation providers were in the list of top companies for revenue.
NTT and Equinix were the vendors that came out on top, based on second quarter colocation revenues, not only in APAC but also pan-regionally.
“APAC is a really interesting market. While at first glance the region might appear to share some characteristics with the European market, it is actually very different,” said John Dinsdale, chief analyst at SRG.
“APAC is less homogeneous than Europe in terms of regulatory, cultural, economic, business and operational issues. China is an extremely difficult business proposition for non-Chinese data centre operators while both Japan and India are also difficult markets to penetrate.
“[The] fact remains that it is a high growth region and the amount of focus it is getting from hyperscale operators will help to drive future growth, especially on the wholesale side of the colocation market.”
Meanwhile, the third to fifth-strongest players in APAC are Chinese firms — China Telecom, GDS and 21 Vianet — with SRG claiming they focus almost exclusively on their home market.
“While those companies benefit from the sheer scale of their home market, other well-established colocation providers who feature strongly in two or more country markets include KDDI Telehouse, STT GDC, Global Switch, Digital Realty and Keppel," the firm claimed.
“Relatively new entrants to the multi-country scene that have aggressive growth plans include AirTrunk, Princeton Digital Group and Chindata.”
