Official statistics on data centers in Germany have been few and far between. There is also hardly any reliable information on the development of the use of data center services within the German SME sector. Bitkom Research has now conducted a representative survey of experts with the help of the Borderstep Institute and published a current study on the data center market in Germany. We have read the study and compiled important findings for you. You can find the complete study here after registering for the Download.
Current market development for data centers
According to Bitkom, data center capacities in Germany have increased continuously and rapidly over the past five years. Measured in terms of the maximum power consumption of the installed hardware, capacities grew by 30% between 2016 and 2021. The growth in the data center market can be attributed in particular to the increasing expansion of cloud computing in Germany. While capacities in cloud data centers increased 2.5-fold between 2016 and 2021, traditional data centers stagnated at a constant level. Thus, the share of cloud data centers in data center capacities in Germany increased from 20% to 33% between 2016 and 2021. By 2025, it is expected that cloud computing could even dominate the market. The growth of the cloud can also be seen in the size structure of data centers. Data centers with > 5MW are increasing significantly, while small IT installations are declining.
More than every second company surveyed uses a private cloud as well as ISP services and hosting. The public cloud is also very popular among German companies, with 47 % now using it. By contrast, around 19% of companies use hybrid provision models. About one in ten companies, on the other hand, still operates its own data center.
Pandemic highlights importance of data centers
However, according to Bitkom, the Corona pandemic has impressively demonstrated that the increase in data center performance associated with the additional energy demand also offers enormous opportunities for the environment and sustainability. Although the operation of data centers increasingly consumes energy and resources, data centers are also a necessary prerequisite for achieving many sustainability goals. This is because the digital applications running in data centers not only enable savings in energy and greenhouse gases in almost all areas of life and work. They also support resource-efficient industrialization, promote innovation and are part of a sustainable infrastructure.
The study clearly shows that awareness of data security and sovereignty is increasing, as is awareness of the issue of sustainability.
Waste heat utilization only in pilot projects so far
The use of waste heat from data centers is currently practically non-existent and is only possible if low-temperature heating networks are expanded and technical and economic barriers are removed. Producers and users of waste heat must therefore be brought together and incentives created.
Conclusion
Due to the growing importance of data centers and limited resources, it is necessary to make their construction and operation as energy-efficient and climate-friendly as possible. This change is happening, but is currently slowed down and is based on the own initiative of data center operators.
According to the latest Bitkom study, the key market and technology trends are the strong growth of cloud and managed service offerings, as well as the increasing power density of data centers. It sees opportunities for the German data center market due to the increased demand for data security and sovereignty, and also from the growing awareness of the issue of sustainability.
