When looking at data centers, enterprise customers have traditionally wanted to see bells and whistles – the lights on servers. In the era of COVID, that mindset is slowly evolving. Increasingly, they are moving away from the attitude that all their data must be securely kept on-premises. At the same time, they are not ready to throw all of their information and applications into the cloud; some of it, they realize, must be situated where they know it resides, and they know the steps that are being taken to keep it secure. This hybrid IT approach has gained significant traction over the last several years.
Many firms are moving toward the hybrid approach: keeping some of their information on site, while moving other data to off-site, third-party data centers or the cloud. The growth in multi-tenant data centers (MTDC) is significant and shows no sign of slowing down. Industry analysts 451 Research recently wrote, “Post COVID-19, we expect demand for leased datacenters overall to rise, as cloud growth translates into datacenter requirements and as enterprises start factoring pandemic preparedness into future business continuity strategies.” Arizton analysts estimate the colocation market will grow at an annual rate of seven per cent, reaching revenues of more than $53 billion by 2025.