Data center construction in North America surged by 43% from 2016, according to an article in World Property Journal.
The data center construction boom is driven by an increase in consumer use of mobile devices for activities ranging from video entertainment to online shopping, which is escalating demand for storage.
Meanwhile, the total number of data centers around the world is expected to peak at 8.6 million in 2017, and then begin to decline, according to a report by IDC.
“The change will be fuelled by mass migration from small, on-premise facilities run by internal IT teams to ‘mega data centers’ operated by large service providers. Worldwide datacenter space will continue to increase, growing from 1.58 billion square feet in 2013 to 1.94 billion square feet in 2018.”, according to the report.