Organisations expect to increase colocation spending

The 451 Research Vendor Window assessment is based on both overall enterprise adoption rates and customer ratings of vendor performance. In the power equipment (e.g., UPS and PDU) sector, Schneider Electric is used by the majority of enterprise customers surveyed (64%), followed by Emerson Network Power (33%). The vendor evaluations of Schneider and Emerson are comparable, with Schneider slightly ahead in market-competitive product features while Emerson rates better for product efficiency. For cooling equipment (e.g., CRAC and CRAH), Emerson is both the most commonly used vendor among the study participants (59%) and the highest rated.

Other findings from the 451 Research Vendor Window for Power and Cooling include:
Johnson Controls (YORK) is the second-highest-rated cooling vendor, and Schneider is ranked third among cooling vendors.

“While the 2015 Vendor Window for Power Equipment shows Schneider is the clear leader in market adoption for power equipment, Emerson is well positioned to challenge their market penetration. Emerson is seen as providing market competitive products and high promise, but needing to work on fulfilment attributes,” said Dan Harrington, Research Director at 451 Research. “Emerson Liebert has a strong brand presence among enterprise IT buyers as a cooling supplier and are viewed as having highly reliable and efficient CRAC and CRAH equipment, especially among large organizations. Our respondents put them far ahead of competitors in terms of both market offerings and their ability to follow through on expectations.”

Colocation Vendor Window
The colocation market is highly competitive and growing steadily. According to 451 Research’s latest Datacenter Market Sizing Forecast Model, the colocation market grew 11% year over year on a square footage basis in Q115, and is forecast to maintain that growth through 2018.

Despite continued consolidation in the market, such as the announced acquisitions of Telx by Digital Realty Trust and Telecity by Equinix, the market is still very fragmented, with more than 1,000 providers identified on a global basis. Only three vendors, Equinix, AT&T and SunGard are used by more than 10% of 451 survey respondents.

Equinix tied with AT&T and SunGard as the most commonly used providers, and is the only provider to rate higher than the overall market average in vendor assessments.

“Equinix leads the pack when it comes to doing what a colocation provider should do best: providing reliable, highly connected and secure facilities. Providers that were ranked lower received poor marks due to aging facilities and poor value for the money. Colocation providers will need to keep their eye on the ball when it comes to modernizing their facilities and delivering core competencies to remain competitive,” said Harrington.

Other Highlights from the Voice of the Enterprise: Datacenters Study include:
Enterprises are closing more datacenters than they are opening, pointing to a continued trend toward consolidation to more centralized premium datacenters. However, 24% of enterprises expect to increase facility spending over the next 90 days as they upgrade their datacenters to handle increasingly dense IT equipment.
Forty-two percent (42%) of organizations expect to spend 15% more on average with their colocation providers in 2016 compared with 2015. Fourteen percent (14%) of organizations are very likely to switch from, or use a different colocation provider for new capacity.

Interest in additional services from colocation vendors is primarily related to enhancing table-stakes services such as 24/7 on-site staff and a broad choice of bandwidth providers. Emerging capabilities, such as a cloud services and direct connection to large cloud providers (AWS, Azure), ranked lower in interest among enterprise IT organizations, with a 6 out of 10.