Digital Realty, Equinix among top colocation providers in Q4 2015

In the colocation space, New York, London, Washington, Tokyo and Silicon Valley were the top worldwide metro areas that generated the most colocation revenue in the fourth quarter of 2015.  According to Synergy Research, these markets account for 27 percent of worldwide retail and wholesale colocation revenues.

Synergy Research metro colo marketsThe next ten largest metro markets account for another 25 percent of the worldwide market. Those top 15 metros include six in the US, four in the EMEA region and five in the Asia Pacific region. Retail colocation services accounted for 76 percent of Q4 revenues and wholesale services 24 percent.

From a colocation provider perspective, Equinix was the market leader by revenue in eight of the top 15 metros while Digital Realty was the leader in two more. Some of the other notable colocation operations in the top 15 metros include NTT, DuPont Fabros, Interxion, China Telecom, 21Vianet, KDDI, @Tokyo, SingTel, Global Switch, CoreSite, CyrusOne and TelecityGroup (since acquired by Equinix). Synergy noted that in 2015 colocation revenue growth in the top 15 metros outstripped growth in the rest of the world by three percentage points, so the worldwide market is slowly being concentrated more in those key metro areas.

Among the top 15 metros with growth rates of 20 percent or more (which are measured in local currencies) were Shanghai, Beijing, Hong Kong, Frankfurt, Amsterdam and Singapore. Among the top five metros, Tokyo had the highest growth rate. Release