Hyperscale Data Centers: A Data Center Frontier Special Report

The hyperscale data center is reshaping the global IT landscape, shifting data from on-premises computer rooms and IT closets to massive centralized data center hubs. Workloads are consolidating in the world’s largest and most efficient facilities. These cloud campuses offer economies of scale, enabling hyperscale operators to rapidly add server capacity and electric power. 

It has become routine for these hyperscale companies —especially the top tier of Amazon Web Services, Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Apple—to invest $1 billion to $3 billion in a single campus. 

The growth of hyperscale cloud campuses is part of a larger densification of America’s IT infrastructure, which features data centers in many new places. This digital transformation will create layers of distributed infrastructure, from the core to the edge of the network. 

In the process, the rise of hyperscale computing has created a new paradigm in the data center business. Hyperscale companies have become the largest customers for leasing wholesale and build-to-suit data center space. As a result, these customers hold huge sway over data center development, which has evolved rapidly to adapt to hyperscale requirements. 

In this special report, courtesy of Iron Mountain, we will examine how hyperscale data centers have changed how we compute, how data center space is built and sold, and has altered the supply chain for digital infrastructure. We also share Data Center Frontier’s take on how this computing shift will evolve.