No one knows exactly how many data centers exist in the United States, but what is known is that more are being built — a lot more. Currently, there is $17B in data center construction in the planning stage according to the ConstructConnect database. Furthermore, 20% of those projects are new data center construction; the rest are additions or alterations to existing facilities.

“Data center operators are always building, but when they aren’t or can’t, they use colocation services, which is another offshoot of the insatiable data center market,” says Jim Nowakowski, president of Accountability Information Management (AIM). Their latest report, Data Center Construction: An Insatiable Market, contains an overview of data centers being built in the United States and Canada and is available to download for free.

“What we wanted to do is provide a framework to navigate this market for manufacturers, architects, owners, and other professionals,” Nowakowski explains. “We used primary and secondary research and produced a report that can serve as a strategic platform to develop marketing campaigns. We think it will help marketers understand the true scope of what is front of them if they take aim at data centers, which by the way use significant amounts of products and energy.”

The report contains an overview of data centers being built in the United States and Canada, including projections from research companies, as well as being heavily footnoted for additional reference overlays for market planners. Highlights include:

1. How COVID-19 only increased the appetite for data, which discusses how COVID-19 impacted the data center construction, including trends such as cooling systems and healthcare growth as well as IoT.
2. A breakdown of the key 297 projects being built in data centers, including where they are being built and who is building them.
3. Charts and lists of architects, contractors, owners, and more that are the key players in these data centers being built.

For example, the report identifies 67 key architects who currently are working on data center projects and then differentiates them between volume of projects and valuation of projects.

“This gives marketers the true picture of who the real players are in the marketplace and offers them the opportunity to create continuity campaigns to reach them with their products and services,” Nowakowski says. “We do the same for general contractors (36), and owners (204).”

According to Nowakowski, that makes the strategic contact options interesting. “You’d think that when you say you want to penetrate the data center market, you’re always looking at Google or Facebook or Microsoft, but that’s not true,” he explains. “If I told you that DC Blox is the company with the highest number of data center projects going on right now, but their valuation is dwarfed by the higher profiled companies like Microsoft and Facebook, that gives you a choice: Do you seek the volume owner, or the almost-impossible-to-penetrate big boys? It’s amazing what you see when you look carefully at data.”

For a copy of the report, visit https://www.a-i-m.com/reports/data-center-construction-an-insatiable-market/.