Top 5 Data Center Market Trends 2022

Price increases, equipment shortages, resource shoring... Five key trends in the data center services market for fall 2022 from Linxdatacenter Sales Director Roman Shulimov

1. Supply shortage

The overall market situation is currently determined by the lack of quality datacenter resources in the main national hubs - Moscow and St. Petersburg.

Difficulties in finding a suitable location and reserving the necessary power capacity are complemented by the loss of access to the necessary engineering and IT equipment, which slows down the launch of new data centers even more.

In the regions, the situation is similar, and it is reproduced despite the smaller volume of demand. The remoteness of locations from the main routes of communication backbone channels, the smaller pool of potential customers and limited resources of engineering networks to ensure the life of data centers.

Also, a common problem with equipment in the country is exacerbated in the regions by the modest staffing capacity to support data centers.

2. Price increase is inevitable

Demand for data center resources in Russia has been growing quite steadily over the past few years, and the events of 2022 have not slowed it down.

The growth rate of supply has approximately halved from 10% to 5% due to the increasing cost of credit, lack of equipment and traditional factors constraining the market (trend #1).

Thus, there is a tangible imbalance between the main market constants, which allows to predict the growth of prices for colocation and IaaS higher than the usual 10-15% per year. Rising costs will be built into the price of racks that will appear on the market in 2024.

The forecast is that we will see a price increase for these services of data center providers in the range of 20-25%.

3. Buying up everything, hurry up and get in line

As a result of lagging supply and demand, almost all new data centers are sold out at the commissioning stage. That is, if 100 racks at a new site are commissioned, they will be sold out almost completely in about six months.

If the client needs the whole hall, it is better to plan such needs about 2 years in advance and reserve capacity from the provider literally at the design stage of the data center.

Otherwise, it is almost 100% likely that the company will be left without IT resources. No overpayment to the provider and overlapping the market price "for urgency" will not solve the problem of objective shortage of computing capacity.

4 The openness of plans of providers

In the past providers of data centers were reluctant to share plans for business development - announcements of new data centers launch were postponed until the last moment. This could be explained by the regime of commercial confidentiality, a desire to be ahead of competitors in certain areas of development, etc.

Now the situation has fundamentally changed - sharing plans for the development of data centers, whether it is the creation of large data centers, construction of small sites around the country for the development of a cloud platform or rental of facilities from other providers has become a new feature of the market.

This is done primarily to attract customers at an early stage of project implementation, which is especially relevant in a situation where demand outstrips supply and the practice of reserving capacity in advance, "at the foundation pit" stage, including in the regions, is actively used.

5. Parallel imports: a temporary symptom

The deficit problems are systematic for the whole market: not only providers, but also customers complain about the difficulties in searching for the equipment and software selection. So far, parallel (gray) imports have been used as a solution.

However, everyone understands that this is a temporary solution. The change of vendors is inevitable in the long term.

Among the positive consequences of the situation is a likely surge in the development of Russian software and hardware manufacturers in the medium and long term. Much will depend on the state support - targeted preferential financing on transparent terms, care about personnel, encouragement of demand for Russian developments - the breakthrough is possible only through collective efforts.

The demand for Russian developments is there and it is growing: large and medium businesses do not reduce their IT needs. According to optimistic forecasts, in 3-4 years the market will adapt to new conditions, and in 8-10 years it will fully recover and start functioning as usual.