Worldwide data center capex growth attained highest level in four quarters in 1Q21

According to a recently published report from Dell’Oro Group, the trusted source for market information about the telecommunications, networks, and data center IT industries, worldwide data center capex is starting to show signs of recovery with 7 percent growth in 1Q21, the highest level of growth since the start of the pandemic a year ago. However, the Cloud hyperscalers are still easing out of the current digestion cycle at a measured pace, and are not projected to surpass 20 percent growth until 2H 2021.

“Capex on data center construction and network infrastructure returned to double-digit growth in 1Q21,” said Baron Fung, Research Director at Dell’Oro Group. “However, spending on servers grew marginally, with higher server average selling prices offset by the decline in unit shipments. We anticipate the cost of servers to continue to climb throughout the year, due to rising commodity and supply chain costs, adoption of accelerated servers, and ramp of the new servers based on the Intel Ice Lake processors,” explained Fung.
Additional highlights from the 1Q21 Data Center Capex Quarterly Report:

• Servers accounted for 39 percent of data center capex in 1Q21.
• Top server vendors by revenue include Dell, HPE, and Inspur. White box server vendors lost share due to Cloud softness.
• Top 10 Cloud service providers projected to increase data center capex by 18 percent in 2021.

CT Bureau