WW Data Center Hardware to Reach $99 Billion in 2011, Up 13% From 2010

Worldwide data centre hardware spending is projected to reach $98.9 billion in 2011, up 12.7 per cent from 2010 spending of $87.8 billion, according to Gartner, Inc.‘s report Forecast: Data Centers, Worldwide, 2010-2015.

Data centre hardware spending is forecast to total $106.4 billion in 2012, and surpass $126.2 billion in 2015.

Data centre hardware spending includes servers, storage and enterprise data centre networking equipment.

"Worldwide data centre hardware spending will finally reach and surpass 2008 levels," said Jon Hardcastle, research director at Gartner. "Growth in emerging regions – particularly Brazil, Russia, India and China (the BRIC countries) – is balanced by continued weakness relative to pre-downturn levels in Japan and Western Europe. Storage is the main driver for growth. Although only a quarter of data centre hardware spending is on storage, almost half of the growth in spending will be from the storage market."

The very largest size category of data centre (which is data centres with more than 500 racks of equipment) will increase its share of spending from 20 per cent in 2010 to 26 per cent in 2015, driven by the cloud and the shift from internal data centre provision to external.

In 2010, 2 per cent of data centres contained 52 per cent of total data centre floorspace and accounted for 63 per cent of data centre hardware spending. In 2015, 2 per cent of data centres will contain 60 per cent of data centre floorspace and account for 71 per cent of data centre hardware spending.

"Traditional in-house enterprise data centres are under attack from three sides. Firstly, virtualisation technologies are helping companies to utilise their infrastructure more effectively, inhibiting overall system growth. Secondly, data centres are getting more efficient, leading to higher system deployment densities and inhibiting demand for floor space. Thirdly, the move to consolidated third-party data centres is reducing the overall number of midsize data centres. Meanwhile, the largest data centre class is, of course, benefiting from the rise of cloud computing," Hardcastle said.

Gartner analysts will explore the evolution of data centre technologies, and how cloud computing and virtualisation will impact IT operations at the Gartner Data Center & IT Operations Summit 2011, 28-29 November in London.