Data Center Industry

The data center industry is built around the data center, a physical room, building or facility for storing, managing and disseminating data, housing IT infrastructure and, increasingly, training artificial intelligence. Models vary by workload: an enterprise, on premises model hosts infrastructure and data at the company's own site, while cloud data centers, including hyperscale facilities run by providers such as Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, IBM Cloud and Microsoft Azure, deliver infrastructure over an internet connection and often contain thousands of servers across many miles of high speed data connections, with the largest occupying up to 10,000,000 square feet. Managed service data centers are run by a third party on a company's behalf, colocation data centers let companies rent space in an off site facility owned by others, and edge data centers are smaller, decentralized facilities placed closer to end users. The International Energy Agency estimated data centers consumed about 415 terawatt hours of electricity in 2024, roughly 1.5 percent of global electricity use, growing about 12 percent a year over the prior five years and projected to reach around 945 terawatt hours by 2030.