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©2015 451 Research, LLC | WWW.451RESEARCH.COM 2016 Trends in Datacenter Technologies Rhonda Ascierto, Research Director Andy Lawrence, Research Vice President Andrew Donoghue, European Research Manager Daniel Bizo, Senior Analyst Leading datacenter technology suppliers are attempting to respond to and anticipate significant changes in demand brought about by cloud and hyperscale datacenter operators, among other factors. These changes will unfold over the next several years, but all face growing pressure today to develop cost-effective and energy-efficient products, as many datacenters of all kinds seek to drive down costs. 2015 PREVIEW
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2016 Trends in Datacenter Technologies

Feb 13, 2017

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Page 1: 2016 Trends in Datacenter Technologies

©2015 451 Research, LLC | W W W. 4 5 1 R E S E A R C H . C O M

2016 Trends in Datacenter Technologies

Rhonda Ascierto, Research Director

Andy Lawrence, Research Vice President

Andrew Donoghue, European Research Manager

Daniel Bizo, Senior Analyst

Leading datacenter technology suppliers are attempting to respond to and anticipate

significant changes in demand brought about by cloud and hyperscale datacenter

operators, among other factors. These changes will unfold over the next several years,

but all face growing pressure today to develop cost-effective and energy-efficient

products, as many datacenters of all kinds seek to drive down costs.

2015

PREVIEW

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©COPYRIGHT 2015 451 RESEARCH. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

A B O U T 4 5 1 R E S E A R C H451 Research is a preeminent information technology research and advisory company. With a core focus on technology innovation and market disruption, we provide essential insight for leaders of the digital economy. More than 100 analysts and consultants deliver that insight via syndicated research, advisory services and live events to over 1,000 client organizations in North America, Europe and around the world. Founded in 2000 and headquartered in New York, 451 Research is a division of The 451 Group.

© 2015 451 Research, LLC and/or its Affiliates. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction and distribution of this publication, in whole or in part, in any form without prior written permission is forbidden. The terms of use regarding distribution, both internally and externally, shall be governed by the terms laid out in your Service Agreement with 451 Research and/or its Affiliates. The information contained herein has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable. 451 Research disclaims all warranties as to the accuracy, completeness or adequacy of such information. Although 451 Research may discuss legal issues related to the information technology business, 451 Research does not provide legal advice or services and their research should not be construed or used as such. 451 Research shall have no liability for errors, omissions or inadequacies in the information contained herein or for interpretations thereof. The reader assumes sole responsibility for the selection of these materials to achieve its intended results. The opinions expressed herein are subject to change without notice.

N EW YO R K

20 West 37th Street 3rd Floor New York, NY 10018 P 212-505-3030 F 212-505-2630

SA N F RA N C I S CO

140 Geary Street 9th Floor San Francisco, CA 94108 P 415-989-1555 F 415-989-1558

LO N D O N

37-41 Gower Street London, UK WC1E 6HH P +44 (0)20 7299 7765 F +44 (0)20 7299 7799

BOSTO N

1 Liberty Square, 5th Floor Boston, MA 02109 P 617-261-0699 F 617-261-0688

A B O U T T H E AU T H O R

R H O N DA ASC I E RTOR E S E A R C H D I R EC TO R

Rhonda Ascierto is a Research Director in the Datacenter Technologies and Eco-Efficient IT practices at 451 Research. Rhonda has been analyzing the crossroads of IT and business for more than 15 years. She focuses on datacenter innovation and energy management in datacenters and across the enterprise. She also covers technologies that enable the efficient use of all resources and help to minimize the environmental impact of business activity.

II

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III

Key Findings

The datacenter is becoming more software-driven, with infrastructure management systems increasingly integrating with IT management systems. This will make DCIM software more effective and more useful, including in hybrid datacenter environments – but will force companies and suppliers to innovate more and to focus on integration.

Prefabricated modular (PFM) datacenter designs are rapidly evolving. We expect PFM datacenters will become the new benchmark to beat for virtually all use cases, giving operators new options – and with greater speed, predictability and agility than traditional approaches.

The Open Compute Project and other hyperscale datacenter architectures represent both an opportunity and a threat to suppliers.

The impact of cloud computing on the datacenter industry and its ecosystems of suppliers is both deep and wide. Technology suppliers need to adjust their strategies and products accordingly.

The role of datacenters as passive users of energy is slowly beginning to change, with some progressive facilities finding more effective ways to interact with, and understand, established and emerging energy suppliers. Over time, the real-time power feed from the grid will become just one of many power sources, rather than the default option.

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IV

INTRODUCTION

FAC I N G C LO U DY H E A DW I N DS, S U P P L I E R S W I L L C H A N G E TAC K

Widespread change across the datacenter sector is disrupting suppliers of equipment, software and services on a number of levels. While executives and investors are buoyed by the secure knowledge that demand for datacenter capacity and datacenter services will continue to grow steadily and globally, their optimism is coupled with uncertainty.

Cloud computing has yet to make its full impact, and the extent and the form of that impact on enterprise and commercial datacenters is still unclear. It will take several years to play out, but demand for on-premises capacity will certainly be offset by the ability to far more easily migrate workloads and place new workloads with cloud providers such as Amazon. This possibility is, in turn, beginning to create new competitive and efficiency pressures; operators looking do ‘more of the same’ or ‘more for less’ are now considering radical change.

Our research shows that there will likely be fewer yet larger enterprise datacenters in 2016 and beyond, as many smaller and regional facilities are consolidated into centralized ‘premium’ sites. While more capacity is being outsourced to public cloud datacenters, a growing number of enterprises are also turning to colocation and hosting providers. Within enterprise and colocation facilities, cost efficiency will be a goal, but not at the expense of availability or reliability. This means high-redundancy facilities will continue to be built, using traditional power topologies and other incumbent equipment. Datacenter equipment suppliers will continue to develop more efficient versions of their products.

Yet their R&D labs are almost unrecognizable from a few years ago, as they develop new technology – and sales and support – strategies to help cloud and other hyperscale datacenters exploit their economies of scale and drive down costs. This isa trend that will only continue in coming years. While hyperscales represent a very small number of sites today, they are the fastest-growing datacenter segment due to demand from cloud providers. They are driving new datacenter designs, technologies and operational approaches, including those proposed by the Open Compute Project (OCP). A small number of other types of datacenters, notably colocation, are also beginning to adopt these non-traditional technologies and designs as a way to differentiate. Over time, more are likely to follow.

There is also significant interest and adoption in prefabricated, standardized datacenters by all sectors of the market, to better align capital expenditure with capacity requirements. Prefabricated modular (PFM) datacenter designs are still emergent yet evolving rapidly and meeting demand for additional capacity in various ways. Some large facilities are being built entirely from prefabbed components. In urban areas and elsewhere, we anticipate that numerous small prefabbed ‘micro-modular’ datacenters will emerge. Edge-of-network requirements, driven by new Internet of Things (IoT) applications, will help fuel their growth.

Regardless of their form, datacenters in the coming years will become increasingly automated and agile across hybrid on- and off-premises environments. Organizations embarking on hybrid datacenter strategies are beginning to realize the need for integrated management tools, driving up demand of datacenter infrastructure management (DCIM) and related software. While DCIM has appeared to be ahead of the market for many years, increasing recognition that well-run datacenters use integrated, fully functional software platforms means DCIM may at last enjoy widespread adoption. However, at this stage of its development, it will be a less distinct market blended with IT provisioning, orchestration and service management.

Another area of change is the sourcing and management of energy. This is more of a long-term trend, although progressive datacenters are already finding more effective ways to interact with, and understand, established and emerging energy suppliers. This is leading to a greater variety of different power architectures and purchasing relationships. New approaches to sourcing and management of energy in the datacenter will manifest themselves in a number of ways, with varying impacts on suppliers of traditional power infrastructure and services, and also ancillary datacenter technology vendors.

This report presents five trends we see shaping datacenter technologies in the coming year.

Executive Summary

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©COPYRIGHT 2015 451 RESEARCH. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

V

451 Research’s 2016 Datacenter Technologies TrendsSource: 451 Research, 2015

METHODOLOGYReports such as this one represent a holistic perspective on key emerging markets in the enterprise IT space. These markets evolve quickly, though, so 451 Research offers additional services that provide critical marketplace updates. These updated reports and perspectives are presented on a daily basis via the company’s core intelligence service, 451 Research Market Insight. Forward-looking M&A analysis and perspectives on strategic acquisitions and the liquidity environment for technology companies are also updated regularly via Market Insight, which is backed by the industry-leading 451 Research M&A KnowledgeBase.

Emerging technologies and markets are also covered in additional 451 Research channels, including Business Applications; Cloud and IT Services Markets; Data Platforms and Analytics; Datacenter Technologies; Enterprise Mobility; European Services; Information Security; Mobile Telecom; Multi-Tenant Datacenters; Networking; Service Providers; Storage; and Systems and Software Infrastructure.

Beyond that, 451 Research has a robust set of quantitative insights covered in products such as ChangeWave, Voice of the Enterprise, Market Monitor, the M&A KnowledgeBase and the Datacenter KnowledgeBase. All of these 451 Research services, which are accessible via the Web, provide critical and timely analysis specifically focused on the business of enterprise IT innovation.

For more information about 451 Research, please go to: www.451research.com.

Winners LosersDCIM Will Move Further Up the IT Stack

Suppliers that can combine and analyze

DCIM data with numerous IT – and financial –

management tools

Suppliers of DCIM platforms that do not at least

promise to meet future DCSO requirements

Prefabricated Datacenters Will Come of Age

Suppliers with messaging clarity and

the right balance of design optimization

and deployment flexibility

Suppliers that do not (or cannot)

develop product enhancements and

invest in effective marketing

Hyperscales and the Open Compute Project Will Disrupt

Well-resourced suppliers that have global reach

and that can create strategic relationships

with hyperscales and rival suppliers

Suppliers that lack the scale, global presence

and resources to rapidly innovate

Cloud Will Drive Technical and Business Change

Colos, hosting and cloud companies that

operate efficiently and flexibly; suppliers of

most classes of datacenter management

software; suppliers that develop a strategy

to work with larger commercial operators

Suppliers wedded to the enterprise datacenter

market, and whose growth is predicated on

physical infrastructure redundancy and over-

provisioning for availability; software suppliers

that don’t participate in the cloud ecosystem

Datacenters Will Evolve from Consumers to Active Energy Players

Suppliers capable of combining utility,

datacenter construction resources and/

or dynamic energy management software

to support energy-smart infrastructures

Suppliers of legacy energy storage, such as

diesel generators, as well as traditional AC

power gear and traditional power generation

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VI

Table of Contents

TRENDS 1

Trend 1: DCIM Will Move Further Up the IT Stack 1

Figure 1: Global Datacenter Management Software Market Forecast . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

RECOMMENDATIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

WINNERS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

LOSERS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

Trend 2: Prefabricated Datacenters Will Come of Age 3

Figure 2: Aggregate PFM Revenue Forecast 2013-18 ($M) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

RECOMMENDATIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

WINNERS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

LOSERS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Trend 3: Hyperscales and the Open Compute Project Will Disrupt Suppliers’ Status Quo 6

RECOMMENDATIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

WINNERS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

LOSERS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Trend 4: Cloud Will Drive Technical and Business Change 8

Figure 3: Datacenter Space Is Being Distributed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Figure 4: Companies Evaluating Disaster Recovery Strategies – Anticipated Site or Service Type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

RECOMMENDATIONS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

WINNERS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

LOSERS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

Trend 5: Datacenters Will Evolve from Consumers to Active Energy Players 12

Figure 5: Different Forms of Renewable Energy Supply for Datacenters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

RECOMMENDATIONS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

WINNERS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

LOSERS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

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VII

THE LONG VIEW 15

Figure 6: The Worldwide Datacenter Installed Base . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .15

FURTHER READING 16

INDEX OF COMPANIES 17

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TREND 1 : DCIM WILL MOVE FURTHER UP THE IT STACKImplication: DCIM software is being extended up the IT stack to associate IT applications and processes with the underlying physical resources (space, power, cooling). The next generation of DCIM buyer is the business-oriented IT specialist, creating new product requirements, supplier partnership opportunities and possibly market entrants.

Deployment of DCIM systems has been slower than most forecasters – including 451 Research – expected. There are many reasons for this, not least that DCIM is in part a number of applications and in part a platform. Platforms do not enjoy strong adoption in tough times unless there are strong applications to drive demand. There is probably no killer app in datacenter management, but there does appear to be a growing recognition that these emerging applications and integrations are valuable and justify the investment, making the case for installing and integrating DCIM stronger.

We are beginning to see growing evidence of datacenter operators exploring how they can achieve a better ROI, including improved customer service, agility and efficiency, through the adoption of datacenter service optimization (DCSO). This involves integration of DCIM data with IT management and other management systems, and developing new KPIs from the combined data.

By aligning the supply of datacenter power, cooling and space (DCIM) with demand from IT (IT management tools), they can improve end-to-end datacenter efficiency, agility and competitiveness. They can also calculate the ‘true’ cost of running applications in their own datacenters and compare against outsourcing options. This is key for best-execution venue strategies, which are becoming more prevalent as the cost of public cloud services continues to fall.

Both DCIM and IT management software suppliers are formulating strategies for early DCSO leadership positions.

Leading DCIM suppliers are partnering with IT service management (ITSM) and VM management tool suppliers to enable integrations. They include large datacenter equipment suppliers Emerson Network Power, Schneider Electric, Panduit and CommScope (iTRACS), as well as DCIM pure-plays such as Nlyte Software, Tier44 and others. They all offer packaged adapters. Emerson Network Power, Schneider, Nlyte and others are developing features to analyze combined DCIM-IT service data. Startups such as TDB Fusion – which has a DCSO software platform, Federos Holistic DCIM – integrate DCIM with other applications, enabling managers to build portals and new applications that combine processes and data from multiple places to allow full two-way control.

As the DCIM and DCSO markets mature (see Figure 1), suppliers in adjacent markets are likely to offer their own products and services. HP, for example, is exploring the DCSO opportunity. In 2014, HP launched its Converged Management Consulting Services (CMCS) to combine IT and facility management, including process and technology. An initial focus is integrating (and reselling) DCIM software with ITSM systems. Despite their public wariness, we believe some services/IT platform suppliers will consider buying into the datacenter software management (DCIM/DCSO) market. There is no shortage of DCIM acquisition targets: Dozens of small suppliers are struggling to grow sales as much larger DCIM rivals gain share.

For big and diversified suppliers, the DCIM and DCSO markets present a relatively small opportunity, with combined 2014 revenue of about $600m and a 26% CAGR through 2019 to reach just under $2bn (a downgraded projection). Yet the role of integrated management software as the datacenter’s central operating system, as well as the foundation of best-execution venue decisions, makes DCSO strategically important.

Trends

Impact tothe Market

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Figure 1: Global Datacenter Management Software Market ForecastSource: 451 Research’s Market Monitor: Datacenter Management Software, September 2015

RECOMMENDATIONS • Integrate. Leading DCIM suppliers should create robust, Web-services based integration capabilities with IT management

tools that enable bidirectional control. APIs should be open and flexible, to ensure they are effective to end users on an ongoing basis (for example, when upgrades are released).

• Create DCSO analytics. Integrations alone will not be enough. Analysis of the combined data, including historic trending and predictive forecasting, will be needed to support business- and IT service-oriented decisions about datacenter capacity.

WINNERS • Suppliers with integrated multi-domain capabilities. Suppliers that can combine and analyze DCIM data with numerous

IT – and financial – management tools, including a combination of ITSM, VM management and cloud management, will be most competitive. Over time, automated DCSO features will be an advantage.

LOSERS • Suppliers of proprietary ‘closed’ DCIM. DCIM is a strategic investment that is typically for the lifetime of a datacenter.

Suppliers that try to provide all DCIM functions, or that create specialist but proprietary systems, will increasingly fall behind. Suppliers of DCIM platforms that do not at least promise to meet future DCSO requirements will find limited opportunity over the long term.

2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019

$2,000

$1,500

$1,000

$500

$0

DCIM and DCSO combined* ($m)

*See 451 Research’s “Datacenter Management Software: DCIM and DSCO” study for detailed forecasts of the DCIM and DCSO markets, including by product subsectors and geographic regions.

$599

$1,900

26% CAGR

2014-2019

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TREND 2 : PREFABRICATED DATACENTERS WILL COME OF AGEImplication: Until recently, PFM datacenters were widely perceived as tools for the odd job. But rapidly evolving PFM designs are giving operators new options – and with greater speed, predictability and agility than traditional approaches. We expect PFM datacenters will become the new benchmark to beat for virtually all use cases, from SMEs to hyperscale operators.

The strongest motivating force that underlies growing adoption of PFM datacenters is the desire to reduce uncertainty: Designing and building an efficient yet mission-critical datacenter facility is a high-stakes business fettered by complexity, and one that is subject to cost overruns and delays. PFM datacenters make planning, design and build of advanced facilities easier and predictable compared to traditional builds. But there is more to it than just improved project management. Operators can manage their capacity prudently while retaining the means to respond to changing business needs swiftly. As more companies come to fully understand its benefits, adoption of PFM datacenters keeps growing.

Since late 2014, the PFM datacenter sector has evolved considerably on both the supply and demand sides. A number of vendors have entered the market, ramped up their sales and marketing activities, or expanded or enhanced their product portfolio. This has made PFM datacenters accessible in new markets and also more attractive to operators that might have been hesitant in the past.

Although the acquisition cost of PFM datacenter capacity clearly remains a primary concern, the industry dialogue is moving past such a static and simplistic view and toward a more nuanced one. It is becoming more widely accepted that the ease of adding capacity is a key advantage of PFM. Also, prefabrication itself reduces risk. Most of the complexity associated with designing and building a datacenter facility is assumed by the manufacturer of PFM products – and absorbed by the manufacturing process. This promotes accountability and predictability of cost and performance for PFM facilities.

These are weighty advantages that will favor PFM building techniques over traditional construction. However, it is the combination of speed and granularity of capacity that will bring about much bigger benefits: PFM enables better use of capital and the means to stay flexible in order to respond to business needs. By building only what’s needed in the short term (say, over 6-12 months), organizations adopting PFM datacenters can defer capital outlays and keep their options open. Should their capacity requirements change (volume of capacity or timing of when it’s required) they will be able to respond in an ‘on-demand’ way. With PFM approaches, they also have the flexibility to specify a different facility configuration for different parts of the IT infrastructure – critical power density, cooling and resiliency level requirements can vary greatly – which promotes higher utilization and more energy-efficient operations.

Another major driver for many PFM datacenter facilities is performance. Precision manufacturing and designs for optimal airflow can deliver significant savings in operational energy and water usage. Some cooling systems are available exclusively as an integrated part of a PFM facility. In mild and cool climates, annualized site power-usage effectiveness (PUE) of 1.2 or better can be achieved, which seemed impossible for all but the hyperscale players just five or six years ago. Today, virtually any datacenter operator has access to such levels of energy efficiency with PFM datacenters, without the need to invest in design and to then build out large facilities to make it economical.

Interest in PFM facility infrastructure will only grow – and the market has a long way to run. 451 Research currently forecasts the market for PFM datacenter infrastructure products to reach $4bn by 2018, up from $1.5bn in 2014. In the past, PFM datacenter products were perceived as tools for odd jobs: remote sites, rapid response installations and portable needs. Not anymore. PFM datacenter designs are evolving rapidly and operators are gradually becoming better educated about the new options available to them. Whether buying in or developing unique designs for their exclusive use, almost all industry sectors are adopting PFM datacenters – including multi-tenant datacenter providers and hyperscales. We maintain a strongly positive outlook on the PFM datacenter market for suppliers, as shown in Figure 2.

Impact tothe Market

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Figure 2: Aggregate PFM Revenue Forecast 2013-18 ($M)Source: 451 Research, 2015

Not surprisingly, the growth and interest in PFM datacenters has led to a supplier-side boom in recent years. We expect that the number of active PFM vendors pursuing international expansion will continue to grow. Technology innovation will also accelerate as a means to gain competitive advantage, as will marketing budgets.

There are several recent examples. WhiteSpace is a brand new startup in the UK that seeks to differentiate itself through a cost-guaranteed design in affordable chunks of up to 250kW. CommScope, the large global structured cabling and communications supplier, and iFortress, a US-based high-security PFM specialist, have stepped up their marketing efforts to promote their PFM offerings internationally. Baselayer Technologies, the technology spin-off of colocation provider IO, has been rapidly expanding its PFM portfolio in 2015. Global civil engineering giant CH2M Hill recently won a significant PFM datacenter project that exploits its airflow-optimized modular design. We expect PFM suppliers will continue to ramp their development, sales and marketing efforts, and that more new suppliers will enter the market.

RECOMMENDATIONS • Education remains key. The degree to which PFM datacenters are accepted and their suppliers succeed largely depends

on vendors’ ability to articulate the holistic value of PFM facilities (e.g., ease of deployment, faster time to production, lowered risks, and much improved alignment with the business). This is no small task – traditional bricks-and-mortar datacenters have long proven reliable. Suppliers need to help customers adopt a different mindset and understand the full benefits of the technology.

2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018

$4,000

$3,500

$3,000

$2,500

$2,000

$1,500

$1,000

$500

$0

$1,064

$1,543

$2,175

$2,726

$3,320

$3,958

30% CAGR

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• Make TCO matter, but not in the old way. Part of the educational process is more nuanced financial modeling of datacenters throughout their expected life. Mimicking traditional planning based on linear capacity uptake and assuming a highly homogenous IT infrastructure is not sufficient – it is effectively modeling a best-case scenario that will never materialize. The case for PFM datacenters becomes clear when more realistic ‘what-if’ scenarios are considered, such as unexpected growth or decline of capacity needs (as a result of migrating to the cloud, for example), widely varying rack power densities, and changing preferences in and availability of new facility technologies, among other things. These are not uncommon scenarios and, given the pace of technological change and the ongoing impact of cloud computing, are being embraced as givens in modern-thinking organizations. These types of models can favor the flexibility of a PFM infrastructure – and can underscore the potential of unnecessary or, at worst, wasted capex if rigid traditional datacenter planning and build techniques were to be used.

• Enable the delivery of prefab infrastructure end-to-end. Datacenter builders and operators differ in their appetite for handling datacenter projects on their own. Some, especially large commercial datacenter operators, possess the skill set and the scale to develop customized datacenters. Others want the PFM vendor to provide a turnkey datacenter, and some want it prefabbed end to end. PFM vendors that want to maximize their market coverage will need to accommodate both types of customers. Either way, this will mean developing trusted partnerships and locally configured products, globally.

WINNERS• Suppliers with messaging clarity and the right balance of design optimization and deployment flexibility. Suppliers

that can demonstrate cutting-edge efficiency (PUEs of 1.2 or below in favorable locations) across a range of load and various climates will be the most successful.

LOSERS• Suppliers that do not (or cannot) develop product enhancements and invest in effective marketing. Despite its

already considerable history, the PFM datacenter market is still nascent – but it is fast evolving. Vendors that do not invest in continuous enhancement of their offering (more optimization, more standard factory configuration options, etc.) will fall behind. The market is shaping up but vendors are currently locked in a race to define what PFM is and what the datacenter of the future should look like. Those that fail to participate at this early stage will risk falling behind.

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TREND 3 : HYPERSCALES AND THE OPEN COMPUTE PROJECT WILL DISRUPT SUPPLIERS’ STATUS QUOImplication: Hyperscale datacenter operators are demanding alternative datacenter designs and technologies to exploit their economies of scale and drive cost efficiencies. This is affecting significant change among leading datacenter tech suppliers, which are being forced to move from mostly mass-scale (for enterprises) to more customized engineered-to-order projects and product development.

Large Internet and cloud service providers have made dramatic improvements in the cost efficiency of their datacenters, and are aggressively pursuing all types of enterprise (and consumer) workloads. Three of the largest-scale Internet firms – Apple, Google and Microsoft – continue to invest heavily in building out mega-datacenters globally, with capital spending at the three companies over the past 10 quarters totaling more than $61bn, according to public filings. This doesn’t exclude the large-scale building by the likes of Facebook, Digital Realty, Rackspace and others. The pace of capex spending by large-scale Internet firms in general has been increasing over the past several years, with no end in sight.

Until recently, the rise of hyperscale datacenter capacity for Internet giants was widely viewed as a threat to datacenter equipment suppliers. However, these operators clearly have huge demand for the best in facility and electrical engineering, and are less able to rely on in-house expertise to innovate and build than in some areas of IT (such as servers or network switches). This is translating into not only a significant opportunity for suppliers, but also significant challenges.

Broadly speaking, we see two main camps of hyperscale datacenters. There are the Internet and cloud behemoths that are driving the creation of alternative datacenter designs and operational approaches. They are seeking to simplify (and standardize) and to strip out as many layers of cost as possible, including for physical infrastructure redundancy (they favor software-led redundancy approaches instead). The other camp includes multi-tenant datacenters that also build, buy and design on a massive scale. While they embrace certain ‘alternative’ approaches (such as medium-voltage power distribution and ambient cooling, for example), they

are more traditional in other ways, including building for high levels of physical infrastructure redundancy.

Some hyperscale datacenters will also be enterprises. Global financial services companies, in particular, are piloting and adopting new electrical topologies and cooling technologies in their own datacenters. However, for most enterprises, the cost benefits will not justify the investment and risks, and they will stick with traditional approaches.

The very large datacenters of Internet and cloud service providers, in particular, can have very different requirements compared to enterprise and other commercial datacenter operators – and they can buy very differently. Internet and cloud hyperscale facilities are purpose-built and use variations of traditional power distribution topologies, such as decentralized UPSs that rely on lithium-ion batteries. They use increased (or entirely) ambient cooling. Their racks may not be traditional sizes and they tend to develop their own datacenter management software. More than most, Internet and cloud hyperscales experiment with alternate energy sources, such as fuel cells and on-site solar and other renewable generation.

Hyperscales are forcing change among datacenter equipment suppliers on several levels. R&D pipelines are almost unrecognizable from a few years ago as the big suppliers Schneider Electric, Emerson Network Power, Eaton, ABB, CommScope, Panduit and others move – to varying degrees – from mostly enterprise mass scale to more (hyperscale) customized engineered-to-order product development, and even collaborative product designs. New business units are being set up to support hyperscale projects, which typically have very short lead times. Profit margins for much of the new hyperscale equipment and projects are likely to be relatively low, yet the volume of business from these mass-scale projects should compensate.

The Internet giants have adopted multi-vendor sourcing strategies globally (there can be exceptions in certain regions). Extreme secrecy surrounds most new hyperscale projects but it is not uncommon for competing datacenter tech suppliers to work cooperatively, exploiting their respective supply chains and resources on a project-by-project basis. This level of cooperation, however, does not extend to suppliers’ R&D and business strategies to gain a bigger share of the hyperscale wallet.

But their ability to differentiate could ultimately be threatened by initiatives such as the OCP. Launched in April

Impact tothe Market

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2011 by Facebook, Rackspace and Intel, the OCP shares customized designs for datacenter infrastructure, including servers, networking, power supplies, racks, PFM datacenters and, most recently, cloud and datacenter management software. The end goal is to improve efficiencies by removing extraneous components from within the equipment, disaggregating equipment to more easily replace components, and lowering overall costs of datacenter builds and operation.

The organization remains IT-heavy on networking and compute innovations, but optimization of traditional datacenter infrastructure is also an OCP goal. OCP approaches can lead to significant design and operational changes, including:

• No mechanical cooling

• Servers running hotter than usual

• Building and server fans being integrated to behave as one overall airflow system

• 480V distribution to the rack

• Semi-distributed UPS systems based on rack-level batteries

• Racks that have deeper-than-usual 21-inch 40U (slots) for servers

• Server power supplies consolidated into a 12V backplane

Suppliers of datacenter infrastructure, such as Emerson Network Power and Schneider Electric, have until recently been slow to actively support OCP in a major way. Schneider became an OCP member in 2015, and both it and Emerson are now contributors. Other giants such as Microsoft are contributing, with designs to embed a lithium-ion battery directly into the server-cabinet power supply, as are small startups such as VaporIO, which donated its PFM datacenter design and datacenter management software run-time environment.

While the future and broader impact of the OCP is not yet clear, a small but growing number of enterprises and colocation and hosting providers are adopting the technologies. Interest in the OCP is growing (the annual OCP Summit in 2015 drew more than 3,000 attendees). As acceptance by end users increases, OCP designs and specifications will become more common within large and hyperscale datacenter projects. Increasingly, suppliers will be competing less on their technology and more on their ability to execute – with speed, scale and cost-effectiveness.

RECOMMENDATIONS • Be agile, and go deep on services and broad on footprint. Services, global supply chains and partners, and speed will

be key to suppliers looking to grow their presence among the world’s largest datacenter operators.

WINNERS• Large suppliers that have global reach and capabilities and the resources to buy or build new technologies. Those

that can create strategic relationships (partnerships) with the largest datacenter operators – as well as rival suppliers – will gain repeat hyperscale business for decades to come during a period of growth.

LOSERS• Suppliers that lack the scale, global presence and resources to rapidly innovate to meet the changing demands of

hyperscale datacenters will be left to compete in the shrinking, increasingly competitive enterprise market.

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TREND 4: CLOUD WILL DRIVE TECHNICAL AND BUSINESS CHANGEImplication: Cloud computing has been driving major changes across the entire IT industry for nearly a decade, and its impact has been accelerating with every passing quarter. For some, the impact of cloud and the growing role of hyperscale operators is existential and severe; for others – for most – there is considerable opportunity, helped by buoyant demand.

The impact of cloud computing on the datacenter industry and its ecosystems of suppliers is both deep and wide. 451’s Research’s view is that the appetite for enterprise ownership of datacenters is waning, and more work will go to colocation, hosting and cloud companies, with all these categories of operators benefiting. Technology suppliers therefore need to adjust their strategies and products accordingly. That will mean more IT and datacenters in proportionately fewer hands (but there will still be many of them). There will also be a greater need for management tools and services; a stronger overall commitment to high standards; and greater opportunity to deploy innovative designs and technology.

While we are cautious about putting a timescale on all these areas, we can see at least the following happening during 2016 and 2017.

C LO U D C R E AT ES ST RAT EG I C U N C E RTA I N T Y, A F F ECT I N G I N V EST M E N T

One of the indirect effects of the emergence of cloud has been its impact on investment in enterprise datacenters. With suppliers such as AWS, in particular, suggesting that companies should look to putting all their IT in the cloud,

and with cloud pricing tracking ever lower, many businesses are now assessing if they should maintain their own datacenters. This has held down investment, both in new builds and retrofits. This trend will continue.

Similarly, many colocation and hosting companies are seeking to ensure that they can run their datacenters cost-effectively, with agility and securely. If they don’t, they will become uncompetitive. Currently, colo and hosting companies are benefiting from a move to private cloud, but many are aware that this may only be a staging post in the journey. This concern is encouraging a cautious growth stance, with a focus on niche, vertical markets and more emphasis on connectivity. Staged, modular buildouts, driven by clear demand, are now the primary investment strategy.

Cloud is also reducing speculative buildout among enterprises, which know that if loads reach anywhere near peak, they can likely buy time to respond by using cloud services (perhaps in combination with colocation). We believe this is already affecting investment in new datacenters by enterprises, which no longer find a wait-and-see approach risky.

For technology suppliers, the demand patterns in enterprise datacenters are likely to continue to be depressed for many, with sales failing to reflect overall industry growth. This slowdown is attributable to the move to commercial services, as well as more efficient design and operations, and lower redundancy. Figure 3 below illustrates how capacity is shifting (in terms of datacenter space).

While the enterprise is slowing, 451 Research data shows all sectors of the commercial datacenter market thriving. This is largely driven by the growth in IT demand and greater use of colocation, hosting and cloud. For all these reasons, big suppliers of equipment will see more and more of their revenue coming from service providers.

Impact tothe Market

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Figure 3: Datacenter Space Is Being DistributedSource: 451 Research’s Voice of the Enterprise: Datacenters Study, August 2015

C LO U D I N C R E AS ES T H E N E E D FO R M A N AG E M E N T A N D AU TO M AT I O N TO O L S

Competition from the array of cloud and other service providers increasingly calls for all classes of datacenter operator – enterprise, colo and hosting (whether cloud or not) – to be more efficient and agile. At the moment, the cost of the facility remains fairly hidden, changes are minimal, and investment decisions are very often made with incomplete information. But that will change: We expect the management of commercial datacenters to become more dynamic. Datacenter-owning service providers will have more revenue sources; they will do more pricing analysis, real-time service costing and end-to-end management accounting; and they’ll invest in automation that brings bottom-line savings. They will move loads around to reduce costs, and charge premiums for availability and connectivity; they will cut resource use for those whose demand is lowered, temporarily or permanently; and they will develop better analytics. This will favor forward-looking, agile service operators and suppliers of tools and services in this area.

This move toward greater investment is already apparent, but growth for these suppliers is so far only gradual. We expect to see a greater pickup over time. For more about this, see our separate section on DCIM, DCSO and management software.

R ES I L I E N CY I N T H E C LO U D

From top to bottom, enterprise and commercial datacenters are designed and operated to achieve high availability. This means generators, redundant power paths, uninterruptible power supplies, and failover and mirroring of computing and databases. Similar assumptions are made about cooling and networking. But developments in virtualization, cloud computing, and (in some areas of IT hardware) power and cooling mean that operators are beginning – just beginning – to design datacenters with less overhead, less headroom and less redundancy… at least locally.

2015

8% 10%

17% 19%

76% 71%

Enterprise MTDC Cloud

2017

Global Datacenter Space in Square Feet

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As some of the physical infrastructure is displaced, we expect more datacenters over time to put more faith in software, networking and more resilient IT. This can save substantial sums on capex and opex. But the move toward cloud resiliency will not be all or nothing: It is also clear that, with greater use of prefabrication and modularity in datacenter design, it is becoming easier and cheaper for operators to build multi-tier datacenters. Many will have low levels of redundancy in one place, and higher levels in another – Facebook’s datacenter in Sweden is an example.

Businesses that are highly dependent on their IT at all times, and need a near-zero recovery time in the event of failure, have long used fault-tolerant IT (mirroring of all IT and data storage), replicated in real time at nearby but geographically separated locations (synchronous replication). With the transportability, location independence and shared infrastructure approach that cloud brings, an opportunity is now emerging to do this at much lower cost. With multiple datacenters operating in tandem, it will be increasingly possible to operate at high availability and rapid recovery times, with lighter infrastructure at each participating location.

For those who need good integrity but have a slightly lower requirement for real-time continuity, cloud services (and colos supporting private cloud) can offer asynchronous replication at much lower costs than historically. Using such services, the data can be copied and recovered, and applications and services restarted remotely, but not necessarily in real time (so there is a risk of some disruption, and reduced service, but at greatly reduced cost). At its theoretical best, the cloud can provide a range of redundancy, from N+1 to xN, without adding huge extra costs as redundancy is scaled up.

The extent of this trend (cloud-based resiliency) and the speed at which it will be developed and adopted is difficult to assess. Some of the technology is immature, and the risks and the cost calculations are all complex and rapidly changing. Certainly, the IT involved is far from simple: Multiple copies of data may be stored at many logically and geographically separate locations to be retrieved in the event of failures.

For many, the safe course for the coming years will be to continue to design as much redundancy as possible at the core power, cooling and network level. But 2015 and 2016 will see more and more moves toward greater use of cloud for backup and resiliency, even if it is not always for mission-critical low-recovery-time systems (see Figure 4).

Examples of progress in this area include the use of availability zones by Amazon, Google and Microsoft, among others, to provide redundancy and synchronous/asynchronous replication; support for cloud-based backup and disaster recovery at a number of service providers; and emerging technology to replicate and manage distributed applications and data from companies such as OneCloud, CloudVelox, CloudEndure, Continuum, Accelerite, HotLink and Zerto. According to a recent 451 Research Market Monitor report, the cloud-based backup and recovery market is expected to surge at a 22% CAGR through 2019, with revenues exceeding $1bn in 2017.

Figure 4: Companies Evaluating Disaster Recovery Strategies – Anticipated Site or Service TypeSource: 451 Research’s Voice of the Enterprise: Datacenters, August 2015

46%

44%

40%

34%

23%

Existing Company-Owned Datacenter

Colocation Provider

Public Cloud Provider

Managed Hosting Provider

New Datacenter Built or Bought by Your Company

Other 4%Sample size: 185 respondents

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CO LO A N D O N - RA M PS TO C LO U D/CO N N ECT I V I T Y

One of the obvious but sometimes overlooked requirements of cloud computing is good wide area connectivity. Without good connections to where the data and applications are located, the customer’s service is vulnerable. And the more distributed the applications and the data are, the more important the connectivity becomes. Such connections need to be resilient (i.e., more than one pathway), high-bandwidth (sufficient for all needs) and, in some but not all instances, of sufficiently low latency.

This has led, in recent years, to a big investment by public cloud providers in direct access technology – direct fiber connections via telecoms providers and/colocation companies from the end user’s equipment into the cloud service provider. AWS Direct Connect, Microsoft Azure ExpressRoute and Google Cloud Interconnect are good examples.

For datacenter operators and their equipment providers, this has created a need for more switching and routing technology on site, as well as good connectivity externally. Equipment vendors such as Cisco and Juniper are now selling significant amounts of equipment to colocation companies. Some of these companies are using this technology to build their own cloud access platforms – the outstanding example is Equinix with its Cloud Exchange – but other initiatives include the independent OpenIX initiative.

A simultaneous development has been occurring in both commercial and enterprise datacenters: There is a greater amount of traffic moving around within datacenters, between different applications and services. This increase in so-called east-west traffic has led to a need for low-end switches and routers and direct fiber cross-connects inside the datacenter. More and more of this traffic, and more and more of these devices, are in turn being managed from centralized management systems – the so-called control planes in software-defined datacenters.

All of this adds to the need for greater investment in networking equipment, in network management systems spanning both internal and external routes, and, particularly inside the datacenter, a greater need for software that is managing physical lines. This will benefit suppliers such as CommScope, Panduit, RiT Technologies, Cormant and others.

RECOMMENDATIONS• Treat the cloud as the datacenter. Software suppliers and datacenter operators should not consider the cloud to be

external. The datacenter is part of the cloud, and the cloud is partly inside the datacenter. Workloads will move in between. Visibility, monitoring, control and access need to extend out to key service providers (i.e., the cloud).

• Understand that the datacenter industry is an industry. Suppliers of all kinds should understand that the datacenter sector is commercializing, industrializing and automating. Their datacenter clients will be more profit/loss-driven, and will have their own clients. That is an opportunity to change the relationship from supplier to partner.

WINNERS • Colos, hosting and cloud companies that operate efficient, agile operations and invest in good internal and external

cloud connectivity, management tools and optimization to support sectors of the market.

• Suppliers of most classes of datacenter management software, including DCSO (tools for integrating with IT and running DCs from a business point of view) and DCIM, control and automation software. Tools for DCSO will become more important to help operators compete with public cloud providers, but also to support agile, rapidly changing cloud environments.

• Suppliers that develop a strategy to work with larger operators, including engineering or customizing products to order.

LOSERS• Suppliers wedded to the enterprise datacenter market that have not adjusted to selling more to commercial operators.

• Suppliers whose growth is predicated on physical infrastructure redundancy and over-provisioning for availability.

• Software suppliers that don’t participate actively in the cloud ecosystem, partnering and using open protocols, or that plan for workloads to stay static over a long period.

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TREND 5 : DATACENTERS WILL EVOLVE FROM CONSUMERS TO ACTIVE ENERGY PLAYERS Implication: Global energy use by datacenters is expected to increase from around 95 billion kWh in 2015 to more than 140 billion kWh in 2020. But the role of facilities as simply passive users of energy is changing. Progressive datacenters are already finding more effective ways to interact with, and understand, established and emerging energy suppliers. This is leading to a greater variety of different power architectures and purchasing relationships. This will inevitably lead to some disruption as the real-time power feed from the grid becomes just one of many power sources at a given time, rather than the default option.

New approaches to sourcing and management of energy in the datacenter will manifest themselves in a number of ways, with varying impacts on suppliers.

The impact on existing suppliers of datacenter technology power infrastructure will be low in the short term, but will increase over time. For example, large hyperscale operators are investing directly in renewable energy projects through power purchase agreements (PPAs), in some cases cutting out established utilities. These and other approaches will have implications not only for utilities, but also for suppliers of traditional power infrastructure and services, and ancillary datacenter technology vendors. We believe:

• Energy efficiency will be a given but variance will increase. PUE ratios, the main measurement of facility efficiency, are falling across the datacenter industry. From 2016, it is likely that very few new datacenters will be built with a design PUE above 1.2-1.5 (depending on geography and resiliency). Hyperscale operators continue to operate facilities with some of the lowest PUEs; comparisons may be unfair, but enterprise and colocation and hosting facilities will increasingly be expected to follow their lead. Progressive operators, especially in Europe, will also look to sell waste heat from facilities (in conjunction with progressive utilities) to improve the cost and carbon efficiencies.

• Energy management will increasingly include IT – specifically workloads/applications. An increasing number of facilities will slash their energy bills (currently about one-third to one-half of datacenter operating costs)

and capital costs by buying more energy-efficient IT, using software for workload management and using IT power management. Workload management, in particular, will be important to make better use of renewable energy; for example, IT workloads could be time-shifted to maximize the availability of renewable energy (grid or on-site). These approaches are characterized by work being done by European Commission research projects (of which 451 Research is a part) around the concept of the ‘Net Zero Energy’ datacenter.

• Some net energy ‘savings’ will also come in the form of ‘transactive energy management.’ This means dynamically managing the supply and demand of electricity in the datacenter, including transacting with the energy utility in real time or switching to on-site power sources at certain times. EBay has been a leader in the use of on-site datacenter power using fuel cells, but we are aware of a number of large financial services companies that are engaged in demand response using datacenter backup diesel generators, and others will follow. The opportunity for more flexible and fluid interaction between on-site and off-site energy sources will become more apparent as the power grid itself becomes more dynamic, with more use of renewable energy and smart-grid technologies. Datacenters will also increasingly be considered in the context of interaction with local energy infrastructure, micro- and mini-grids (such as San Diego’s supercomputer energy campus), and other intelligent buildings given growing investment in so-called smart cities.

• Renewables will become more viable and cost-effective. While most datacenters are likely to derive only a small percentage, if any, of renewable energy from the grid or an on-site source in the near-term future, a handful of hyperscale datacenter operators are skewing that trend. For example, in Q1 2015, Apple said it was investing $1.9bn in two new European datacenters that will be 100% powered by renewables (grid and on-site). There are a variety of ways for datacenters to interact with renewables from on-site generation to PPAs (see Figure 5). Examples include commercial datacenter provider QTS, which in 2014 built a 360,000-square-foot facility in East Windsor, New Jersey, adjacent to 57,000 solar panels generating up to 14.1MW of power. This could be viewed as a form of micro-grid between the solar power provider and datacenter – an approach that will increase in the future.

Impact tothe Market

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Figure 5: Different Forms of Renewable Energy Supply for DatacentersSource: EU RenewIT Project Deliverable D4.1 2015

Suppliers such as ABB, Eaton, Schneider Electric and others view on-site energy generation as an opportunity. There are specialist suppliers, such as for datacenter fuel cells, including Bloom Energy and Hydrogenics (which the datacenter equipment supplier CommScope resells), among others. On-site generation is cost-effective mostly for very large or hyperscale facilities – but in many major datacenter regions the power from the grid is still relatively reliable and inexpensive, slowing adoption. There will likely be clusters of enterprise datacenters sharing a micro-grid, but by and large, the promise of on-site generation is long-term.

RECOMMENDATIONS• DCIM suppliers will need to add IT power management and workload management capabilities. Datacenter

operators will increasingly require holistic datacenter management tools that go beyond mere asset management or environmental monitoring but that also allow transactive interaction with utilities and other partners.

• Datacenter power infrastructure suppliers should develop smart city and IoT strategies. Suppliers of power infrastructure and other datacenter technologies will need to be able to position their products in the context of smart cities and related areas such as IoT and enterprise energy management.

• Colocation, hosting and other datacenter services suppliers will increasingly compete on energy. Commercial datacenter service providers have seen an increasing requirement to demonstrate energy and carbon-efficiency measures in certain markets. This will continue to intensify as customers expect transparency on energy use and more flexible billing.

4. Renewable from third parties (RECs)

3. Off-site generation/colocation

2. On-site generation from

off-site renewables

1. On-site generation from

on-site renewables

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• Proactive datacenter operators could benefit from efficiencies. Only a relatively small number of datacenters will actively invest in on-site renewables (or colocate with alternative energy providers), but others will begin to alter existing power infrastructure in response to wider changes in the grid.

WINNERS• IT and energy-savvy engineering firms. Companies capable of combining utility and datacenter construction resources

to build end-to-end, smart infrastructures for datacenters and beyond will find opportunities to win more projects.

• IT power management suppliers. As datacenter energy provision becomes more dynamic and variable, operators will (eventually) expect their IT infrastructure to be capable of adjusting and reacting.

• Workload management software suppliers. There will be an increasing requirement for software to monitor and manage workloads more intelligently and match them to periods of cheapest energy (renewable/non-renewable and on-site/grid).

• On-site power generation and related technology suppliers. Suppliers of equipment and infrastructure – fuel cells, energy storage and direct current (DC) power equipment – would benefit from a more widespread use of on-site generation. These include energy-storage suppliers, such as those with expertise in automotive electric batteries such as Tesla and Nissan, which are already actively developing technology for the datacenter, as well as suppliers of DC power distribution and conversion equipment over the long term.

LOSERS • Suppliers of legacy energy storage. This includes suppliers of diesel generators, natural gas generators and associated

infrastructure such as on-site fuel tanks.

• Suppliers of traditional AC power gear. Renewable power is generated as DC, which arguably could eventually disrupt the need for traditional AC gear (such as UPS and power distribution equipment).

• Suppliers of traditional power generation. We expect to see gradually leveling or falling demand for traditional oil and gas turbines, and suppliers of these products should be ready to respond to this shift eventually.

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The Long View

15

While the availability of public cloud and other third-party datacenter services will offset the demand for on-premises datacenter capacity, there will be minimal impact on the broader datacenter install base. Figure 6 below shows that the total number of datacenters and IT sites worldwide will remain relatively flat from 2015 to 2018, growing at a .42% CAGR.

Figure 6: The Worldwide Datacenter Installed Base Source: 451 Research’s Voice of the Enterprise: Datacenters Study, 2015

Any kind of noticeable growth has been stymied by datacenter consolidation trends among enterprises, as well as growing IT operational efficiency. Commercial datacenters, however, continue to grow strongly, and are increasingly a target for datacenter technologies suppliers.

Looking forward to 2015/16, there is good cause for executives and investors to be optimistic. While growth may not be even across suppliers and datacenter sectors, demand for datacenter capacity and datacenter services will continue to grow steadily and globally. This trend, driven by the voracious growth of social networks, mobile device use, online video and the IoT, is further underlined by economic forecasts that, while hardly rosy, are still generally benign.

2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018

4,450,000

4,400,000

4,350,000

4,300,000

4,250,000

4,200,000

4,150,000

4,100,000

4,050,000

4,000,000

Worldwide Datacenters and IT Sites

2013-2018

4,251,765 4,262,511

4,274,302 4,288,809 4,306,572

4,328,265

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Further Reading

16

Market Monitor: Datacenter Management Software (DCIM and DCSO), September 2015

Datacenter Infrastructure Management and Beyond: A Guide to Datacenter Management Tools, July 2015

Global Prefabricated Modular Datacenter Forecast 2014-2018: Entering the Mainstream, January 2015

Energizing Renewable-Powered Datacenters, April 2015

Q3 2015 - Voice of the Enterprise: Datacenters, Worldwide & Regional Survey Results and Analysis, August 2015

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Index of Companies

17

ABB 6, 13

Accelerite 10

Apple 6, 12

Baselayer Technologies 4

Bloom Energy 13

CH2M Hill 4

Cisco 11

CloudEndure 10

CloudVelox 10

CommScope 1, 4, 6, 11, 13, 17

Continuum 10

Cormant 11

Digital Realty 6

Eaton 6, 13

EBay 12

Emerson Network Power 1, 6, 7

Equinix 11

Facebook 6, 7, 10

Google 6, 10, 11

HotLink 10

Hydrogenics 13

iFortress 4

Intel 7

Juniper 11

Microsoft 6, 7, 10, 11

Nlyte Software 1

OneCloud 10

Panduit 1, 6, 11

QTS 12

Rackspace 6, 7

RiT Technologies 11

Schneider Electric 1, 6, 7, 13

Tier44 1

VaporIO 7

WhiteSpace 4

Zerto 10