Dell’Oro: Cloud data center capex to grow 20% over next year

Sept. 28, 2021

Unfortunately, data center capex expansion overall will find itself hampered in the near term by supply chain issues that enterprise data center operators will face.

Stephen Hardy

Dell'Oro Group, in its newly released 2Q 2021 Data Center Capex Quarterly Report, predicts that cloud data center capex will increase by more than 20% year-over-year in the next four quarters. Unfortunately, data center capex expansion overall will find itself hampered in the near term by supply chain issues that enterprise data center operators will face.

Overall, global data center capex numbers should grow 9% this year.

"The cloud service providers' digestion cycle has persisted longer than predicted due to the continued market uncertainty," said Baron Fung, research director at Dell'Oro Group. "We anticipate another cloud expansion cycle to commence starting in the second half of this year, with the service providers increasing their deployment of the latest generation of servers based on the Intel Ice Lake and AMD EPYC Milan x86 processors. While the ongoing supply chain issues may hinder investments, the enterprise, rather than the cloud, is likely to be impacted."

The good news for communications technology vendors is that network infrastructure spending will grow faster than IT infrastructure spending this year. Not surprisingly, Google and Microsoft will spend the most in capex among cloud service providers over the next four quarters, collectively launching services in 13 new regions, according to the report.

Dell'Oro's Data Center Capex Quarterly Report details the data center infrastructure capital expenditures of each of the 10 largest cloud service providers, as well as the “rest of cloud,” telco, and enterprise customer segments. Allocation of the data center infrastructure capex for servers, storage systems, and other auxiliary data center equipment is provided. The report also discusses market trends, drivers of the leading cloud service providers' capex growth during the quarter, and the outlook for the next year.

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About the Author

Stephen Hardy | Editorial Director and Associate Publisher, Lightwave

Stephen Hardy is editorial director and associate publisher of Lightwave and Broadband Technology Report, part of the Lighting & Technology Group at Endeavor Business Media. Stephen is responsible for establishing and executing editorial strategy across the both brands’ websites, email newsletters, events, and other information products. He has covered the fiber-optics space for more than 20 years, and communications and technology for more than 35 years. During his tenure, Lightwave has received awards from Folio: and the American Society of Business Press Editors (ASBPE) for editorial excellence. Prior to joining Lightwave in 1997, Stephen worked for Telecommunications magazine and the Journal of Electronic Defense.

Stephen has moderated panels at numerous events, including the Optica Executive Forum, ECOC, and SCTE Cable-Tec Expo. He also is program director for the Lightwave Innovation Reviews and the Diamond Technology Reviews.

He has written numerous articles in all aspects of optical communications and fiber-optic networks, including fiber to the home (FTTH), PON, optical components, DWDM, fiber cables, packet optical transport, optical transceivers, lasers, fiber optic testing, and more.

You can connect with Stephen on LinkedIn as well as Twitter.