In Focus: Increased Data Center Growth Driven by the COVID-19 Pandemic
March 24, 2021
The stratospheric rise of the cloud over the past few years caught many off guard and created an arms race among the cloud providers, with data center development underpinning the effort.
These cloud providers were anticipating ever-increasing demand for the cloud by globally creating a robust and redundant network of massive data centers tethered together through a network of smaller data centers and fiber connection locations. Data centers that service other segments of the market (wholesale colocation, “edge,” and retail) were also riding the wave of increased demand. Little did we know a global pandemic would make data centers and the cloud even more critical.
The sudden and unforeseen COVID-19 crisis revealed what was becoming obvious — technology has infiltrated almost all aspects of our lives and created more and more data that needs to be processed and stored, optimally in a purpose-built data center. Instantly, a massive slice of workers around the globe were working from home and needed to stay as productive as before. Patients could no longer visit their doctors in person, so telemedicine use exploded.