Cover story

The global datacentre market has continued to enjoy excellent health this year, and the consensus says the total market size will reach north of $500bn before 2026. Gartner estimates that over $400bn will have been poured into datacentres and equipment before the year is out, of which threequarters will have been spent by the hyperscalers, a 23% jump on the previous year.

Gartner says the global Infrastructure-as-a- Service (IaaS) market for 2024 has seen growth of 22.5%, to reach $171.8bn. First-mover Amazon is still in the lead, followed by Microsoft, Google, Alibaba and Huawei. The IaaS market only refers to the renting of hardware, and doesn’t include software or platform sales. The top five IaaS providers now account for 82.1% of the market. Amazon saw revenue of $64.8bn and has 37.7% of the share, with 18.6% growth. Microsoft follows with $41bn, with 23.9% of the market, and with growth of 27.6%. Google earned revenue of $15.5bn, and grew 35.4%. These numbers show that the challengers are chipping away at the leader’s share, and are growing at a faster pace.