Data Center 50: The Coolest Data Center Companies Of 2022

From the world’s largest providers of data center hardware and software to the cloud data center giants building new centers across the globe, CRN breaks down 50 of the coolest data center companies in 2022.

The 2022 Data Center 50

The data center market landscape has changed considerably over the past few years as financial investment firms and cloud giants are leading the industry compared with data center operators themselves.

“The level of data center investment required is too much for even the biggest data center operators, causing an influx of new money from external investors,” John Dinsdale, chief analyst at Synergy Research Group, recently told CRN. “Over the last 18 months there has been a very notable shift in buyers, with private equity investors becoming a lot more active than data center operators.”

Although private equity firms and cloud leaders like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft and Google are pouring billions into data centers every quarter, there is still growth ahead for the major data center infrastructure hardware, software and colocation providers.

Worldwide data center systems revenue is expected to reach $226 billion in 2022, representing annual growth of nearly 5 percent year over year, according to IT research firm Gartner. Global data center systems spending is expected to grow another 5 percent in 2023, reaching $237 billion, Gartner predicts.

Many of the data center market leaders are currently transitioning from a Capex sales model to a consumption-based, as-a-service sales motion for key products such as servers, storage and networking hardware, while at the same time striving to boost artificial intelligence, automation and machine learning capabilities inside data centers.

From the world’s largest providers of data center hardware and software to the cloud data center giants building new centers across the globe, CRN breaks down the 50 most important data center companies in 2022.

Amazon Web Services

Adam Selipsky, CEO

Headquarters: Seattle

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the largest builder of new data centers in the world, spending billions each quarter to accommodate the high demand for its cloud computing products and services. AWS is the market-share leader in the cloud but is launching more on-premises data center infrastructure like AWS Outposts to enable the hybrid cloud. In July, AWS selected former Tableau CEO Adam Selipsky to lead the company.

AMD

Lisa Su, President, CEO

Headquarters: Santa Clara, Calif.

With its $35 billion acquisition of Xilinx now under its belt, AMD is betting big on high-performance computing in the data center where its EPYC server CPU business is growing substantially. AMD’s data center business doubled in 2021 with the chipmaker’s next-generation EPYC processors, code-named Genoa, due out later this year.

American Tower

Tom Bartlett, President, CEO

Headquarters: Boston

American Tower entered the data center market just a few months ago with its $10.1 billion blockbuster purchase of CoreSite, the fourth largest U.S. data center operator in terms of colocation and data center revenue. American Tower is looking to shake up the U.S. data center market with plans to create a differentiated communications platform to accelerate global 5G deployments after acquiring CoreSite’s 25 data centers.

Arista Networks

Jayshree Ullal, President, CEO

Headquarters: Santa Clara, Calif.

Arista Networks has been a top data center networking provider for a decade. The networking standout is a leader in cognitive cloud networking for large data centers and campus environments with a focus on the edge. Arista generated nearly $3 billion in sales in 2021, up 27 percent year over year.

Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company

Phil Mottram, President, HPE Intelligent Edge business

Headquarters: Santa Clara, Calif.

Aruba Networks is HPE’s highly successful networking arm that offers data center and edge infrastructure tied with software-defined fabric automation, orchestration and distributed analytics. With one of the biggest data center and edge computing switching portfolios in the market, Aruba has been integrated into HPE’s stack to be offered as a service to help drive HPE GreenLake.

Broadcom

Hock Tan, President, CEO

Headquarters: San Jose, Calif.

Broadcom provides a wide variety of data center products from network switches, custom silicon and storage infrastructure to SAN technology, automation and application development software. The global semiconductor specialist is an innovator in high-performance devices for data center, the cloud and AI networks. Meta is using Broadcom’s Ethernet switch chip, StrataXGS Tomahawk, in its data centers’ network fabric.

Cisco Systems

Chuck Robbins, Chair, CEO

Headquarters: San Jose, Calif.

Cisco has dominated the global data center networking market for decades. The network titan offers a slew of switches, servers, routers and hyperconverged infrastructure to its massive customer base, along with top-notch automation, management and monitoring offerings for hybrid and multi-cloud. Cisco’s Nexus switches are industry-leading offerings in the data center.

Citrix Systems

Robert Calderoni, CEO

Headquarters: Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

The software star provides SD-WAN, traffic management, application delivery management and analytics to boost performance in addition to its own hypervisor for its data center customers. Citrix’s SD-WAN virtual appliances can be deployed in public clouds and integrate with Citrix SD-WAN appliances hosted in data centers. Citrix is being acquired by private equity firms this year for $16.5 billion.

Cologix

Bill Fathers, Chairman, CEO

Headquarters: Denver

Cologix is building future-proof data centers by integrating hyperscale edge capacity with robust interconnection. The company provides secure, reliable, scalable, high-performance cloud-enabled data center and interconnection offerings and services. Cologix’s data center business includes 29 colocation and interconnection data center hubs across 10 North American markets.

CyrusOne

David Ferdman, Co-Founder, CEO

Headquarters: Dallas

CyrusOne has approximately 50 data centers across the globe offering colocation, hyperscale and built-to-suit environments for its 1,000 customers. Last year, CyrusOne brought back its co-founder and former CEO David Ferdman to lead the company once again. The data center standout is set to be acquired this year by private equity firms KKR and Global Infrastructure Partners for $15 billion.

Cyxtera

Nelson Fonseca, President, CEO

Headquarters: Coral Gables, Fla.

The data center colocation provider became a public company in July after Starboard Value Acquisition completed its $3 billion acquisition of Cyxtera. The company operates 62 data centers across the globe in 29 markets and is a leader in the retail colocation space with over 2,300 customers. Cyxtera provides API-driven, automated infrastructure with a variety of bare-metal solutions.

DataBank

Raul Martynek, CEO

Headquarters: Dallas

DataBank aims to provide best-in-class colocation, cloud, edge and connectivity offerings through its more than 65 data centers and 20 interconnection hubs in 30 markets. DataBank became the largest privately held U.S. data center provider after it acquired 44 data centers from Zayo Group in 2020. This year, DataBank plans to acquire four data centers in Texas from CyrusOne for $670 million.

Dell Technologies

Michael Dell, Founder, Chairman, CEO

Headquarters: Round Rock, Texas

Dell Technologies is the largest data center infrastructure provider in the world with a market-leading portfolio of servers, storage and hyperconverged infrastructure. Dell is a leading innovator around data center infrastructure performance, scalability, edge computing and modular data centers. The company is striving to make its entire portfolio available in a consumption-based, as-a-service model via Dell Apex.

Digital Realty

William Stein, CEO

Headquarters: Austin, Texas

Digital Realty is spending billions on acquisitions to massively expand its data center footprint of more than 280 facilities across 24 countries on six continents. In January, Digital Realty unveiled plans to become the leading colocation and interconnection provider in Africa by investing $3.5 billion to acquire a majority stake in Africa’s largest data center provider, Teraco.

Eaton

Craig Arnold, Chairman, CEO

Headquarters: Dublin, Ireland

Eaton is a power management superstar in the data center market, offering a slew of power products and software—from UPSes, heat containment systems and PDUs to intelligent management and its Brightlayer software suite. Eaton provides tailor-made data center offerings for SMBs to hyperscalers. In 2021, Eaton completed its acquisition of fellow data center provider Tripp Lite for $1.65 billion.

EdgeConneX

Randy Brouckman, Co-Founder, CEO

Headquarters: Herndon, Va.

EdgeConneX is a top edge data center provider with purpose-built offerings for customers in any type of deployment. The company operates more than 40 data centers in over 30 markets across the Americas, Europe and Asia, along with its recent market entry into China and India. EdgeConneX also offers infrastructure management, physical security, compliance and support services.

Equinix

Charles Meyers, President, CEO

Headquarters: Redwood City, Calif.

Equinix is one of the largest data center and colocation providers in the world. In addition to spending billions on data center acquisitions each year, Equinix has a constant flow of product innovation such as its new Equinix Metal that customers can consume as a service. Its custom-built xScale data center approach has been highly successful with plans to build 32 hyperscale-focused xScale data centers across the globe.

Extreme Networks

Ed Meyercord, President, CEO

Headquarters: San Jose, Calif.

Extreme Networks is a longtime data center networking provider of switches, routers, programmable ASICs, Wi-Fi, cloud management and automation to its more than 50,000 customers. The company delivers end-to-end, cloud-driven networking offerings and has a large channel community. Extreme generated a record $1 billion in revenue for its fiscal year 2021, up 6 percent year over year.

Flexential

Chris Downie, CEO

Headquarters: Charlotte, N.C., and Denver

Flexential is one of the most channel-friendly data center vendors in the market. The company recently launched a new partner portal to give partners greater performance and easier navigation. The company has built a national footprint consisting of 38 data centers across 19 markets. Last year, Flexential raised $2.1 billion to build highly sustainable data centers and enter new markets.

Google

Sundar Pichai, CEO

Headquarters: Mountain View, Calif.

Google has consistently been a top three global spender on building new data centers for the past several years. The search and cloud giant is growing substantially thanks to skyrocketing sales from Google Cloud, where revenue rose 45 percent to $5.5 billion in its recent fourth fiscal quarter 2021. Google is also building the Equiano subsea cable that will connect Africa to Europe.

H5 Data Centers

Josh Simms, Founder, CEO

Headquarters: Denver

H5 Data Centers is a national provider of wholesale data centers and colocation services with a focus on reliability, security and flexibility. The company manages 22 data centers in 20 U.S. markets with offerings ranging from built-to-suit wholesale to individual cabinet retail and everything in between. This year, H5 Data Centers unveiled plans to acquire seven data centers from vXchnge.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Antonio Neri, President, CEO

Headquarters: Houston

HPE is one of the world’s leading providers of data center infrastructure including servers, storage, networking, edge and hyperconverged infrastructure. The $28 billion company has successfully transitioned its data center portfolio into consumption-based offerings via HPE GreenLake. HPE is doubling down on edge computing, as-a-service and supercomputing in 2022.

Hitachi Vantara

Gajen Kandiah, CEO

Headquarters: Santa Clara, Calif.

Hitachi Vantara’s Smart Data Center end-to-end offering combines advanced data center analytics, artificial intelligence and automation alongside its storage or hyperconverged infrastructure. The company is focused on helping customers become data-driven organizations by leveraging its data center management software and analytics aimed at accelerating digital transformation

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IBM

Arvind Krishna, CEO

Headquarters: Armonk, N.Y.

The IBM Cloud network has more than 60 data centers across six regions and 19 availability zones globally. Built for local access, low latency and certified security, IBM Cloud offers a range of choices about where and how data and workloads run. IBM offers a slew of data center products—from bare- metal servers and storage to AI, blockchain and automation.

Intel

Pat Gelsinger, CEO

Headquarters: Santa Clara, Calif.

Intel’s server processors have been a staple in the data center market for decades. The company provides memory and storage capacity for data centers with its Intel Optane portfolio, as well as Ethernet network adapters, controllers and programmable switch products. Intel recently unveiled plans to buy Israeli chipmaker Tower Semiconductor for $5.4 billion.

Iron Mountain

William Meaney, President, CEO

Headquarters: Boston

Iron Mountain operates data centers in 18 locations in the U.S., Europe and Asia-Pacific, offering wholesale data centers, colocation, modular centers, data center as a service as well as a range of services from information and life-cycle management to secure records storage. The company also offers underground and edge data centers as well as custom-made facilities for hyperscalers. Iron Mountain has over 225,000 customers worldwide.

Juniper Networks

Rami Rahim, CEO

Headquarters: Sunnyvale, Calif.

Juniper Networks has been a top data center networking vendor for more than a decade, consistently enhancing its broad networking portfolio of switches, routers, automation software and security. Last year, Juniper acquired intent-based networking pioneer Apstra in a move to boost its data center business. In February, Juniper said it had acquired WiteSand, a provider of cloud-native zero trust NAC solutions.

Lenovo

Yang Yuanqing, Chairman, CEO

Headquarters: Hong Kong

The worldwide leader in PCs has seen solid data center growth from its server, storage, software and hyperconverged portfolio. Lenovo’s infrastructure business delivered record revenue of nearly $2 billion in its recent second fiscal quarter, up 34 percent year over year. Lenovo is doubling down on its TruScale as-a-service strategy by adding new offerings this year such as high-performance computing as a service.

LogicMonitor

Christina Kosmowski, CEO

Headquarters: Santa Barbara, Calif.

LogicMonitor hired Christina Kosmowski, who has a long history with Salesforce and Slack, as its new CEO in January. The SaaS-based infrastructure monitoring company provides visibility into everything inside a data center while automatically correlating data to solve for business outcomes. LogicMonitor helps customers gain insight into networks, clouds, data, servers and applications within one platform.

Lumen Technologies

Jeff Storey, President, CEO

Headquarters: Monroe, La.

CenturyLink merged with Level 3 Communications in 2020 to form Lumen, combining security, adaptive networking and collaboration services into an architecture to deploy and accelerate applications. Alongside its broad portfolio of cloud, security and communications solutions, Lumen is doubling down on edge computing innovation, including gateways and network storage.

Microsoft

Satya Nadella, Chairman, CEO

Headquarters: Redmond, Wash.

Microsoft has been one of the biggest spenders on building new data centers on a global basis for years to accommodate its massive Microsoft Azure growth as well as consumer technology such as VR and the new Windows 11. Microsoft is investing in better data center management efficiency technology such as immersion cooling for future high-density centers, as well as underwater data centers.

NetApp

George Kurian, President, CEO

Headquarters: Sunnyvale, Calif.

NetApp has been a top storage infrastructure and data services provider in the data center market for years, providing everything from all-flash array and scale-out NAS offerings to workload automation and data backup and recovery. NetApp’s storage business has been on fire lately thanks to strong all-flash storage array sales and a boost in its public cloud business.

NTT Global Data Centers

Douglas Adams, President, CEO, Americas

Headquarters: Sacramento, Calif.

NTT Global Data Centers has dozens of data centers across the globe with a major presence in Asia and India as well as in key markets including London, Tokyo and Northern Virginia. The company is part of NTT Ltd., a global conglomerate of 31 brands and regional data center groups including Dimension Data and NTT Communications.

Nutanix

Rajiv Ramaswami, President, CEO

Headquarters: San Jose, Calif.

Nutanix is a dominant player in hyperconverged software infrastructure with an ever-growing portfolio of hybrid cloud and multi-cloud offerings for the data center. The company recently revamped its entire portfolio, simplifying 15 different products into just five new offerings. Nutanix also recently enabled core-based pricing and metering for customers to help with cost complexities related to multi-cloud.

Nvidia

Jensen Huang, Founder, President, CEO

Headquarters: Santa Clara, Calif.

Following its $7 billion acquisition of Mellanox Technologies in 2020, Nvidia’s data center business is as large as it’s ever been. The chipmaker’s end-to-end accelerated computing platform, integrated across hardware and software, gives organizations a robust infrastructure that supports develop-to-deploy implementations across all workloads. Nvidia’s GPU data center technology delivers optimized performance at any scale with fewer servers.

Oracle

Safra Catz, CEO

Headquarters: Austin, Texas

Oracle is continuing to spend billions on building new data centers across the globe to support the growing demand for Oracle Cloud services, infrastructure and applications. The software and cloud giant has dozens of data centers in 20 counties with 37 Oracle Cloud Regions that provide high-performance environments to move, build and run workloads, along with over 80 cloud service offerings.

QTS Realty Trust

Chad Williams, Chairman, CEO

Headquarters: Overland Park, Kan.

QTS has 28 data centers across the U.S. and the Netherlands with interconnection and colocation services. Through its software-defined technology platform, QTS delivers compliant infrastructure offerings, robust connectivity and services to customers. In 2021, investment firm Blackstone Group acquired QTS for $10 billion with major commitments to invest in QTS’ data center business and platform.

Scale Computing

Jeff Ready, CEO

Headquarters: Indianapolis

Edge computing pioneer Scale Computing specializes in hyperconverged and virtualization in the data center and at the edge. Scale Computing’s HC3 appliances combine virtualization, servers, storage, and backup and disaster recovery into a single offering, eliminating the need for third-party components or licensing. The highly efficient virtualization infrastructure is easy to use and maintain, with the goal of cost savings.

Schneider Electric

Jean-Pascal Tricoire, Chairman, CEO

Headquarters: France

Schneider Electric is a leading provider of power infrastructure, software and cooling offerings in the data center. From prefabricated data center modules and power management software to UPSes and security monitoring, the company continues to be a major player in the data center industry. Schneider Electric’s configurable rack-based offerings bring power, cooling, management and security together to support edge deployments.

Serverfarm

Avner Papouchado, Founder, CEO

Headquarters: El Segundo, Calif.

Serverfarm is a data center operator and colocation specialist with a focus on data center management as a service. The company has nine data centers, mostly in the U.S., although it recently unveiled plans to build a new data center in Israel. Through Serverfarm’s cloud-based InCommand Services platform, organizations maximize operational efficiencies and gain better control over their IT infrastructure.

SolarWinds

Sudhakar Ramakrishna, President, CEO

Headquarters: Austin, Texas

SolarWinds provides end-to-end data center monitoring and management for network performance, network configuration, virtualization, storage and applications. The company’s infrastructure offerings help organizations ensure the health and configuration of physical and virtual servers, containers, private clouds, storage, and networks across hybrid IT environments. Last year, SolarWinds hired former Pulse Secure CEO Sudhakar Ramakrishna as its new leader.

Stack Infrastructure

Brian Cox, CEO

Headquarters: Denver

Stack Infrastructure is a fast-growing U.S. data center market player with its focus on hyperscaler customers. Stack has expanded internationally since being founded in 2019, including entering the Asia-Pacific market via a new regional headquarters in Singapore and the construction of a data center campus in Toronto. The company recently unveiled a new 216-megawatt data center in Northern Virginia.

Supermicro

Charles Liang, Founder, Chairman, President, CEO

Headquarters: San Jose, Calif.

Supermicro is one of the global market leaders in high-performance computing, high-efficiency servers and storage technology in data centers. Supermicro’s broad portfolio of data center products include all-flash NVMe storage, HPC severs, motherboards, chassis and networking. The company recently reported second-quarter net sales of $1.17 billion, up 40 percent year over year.

T5 Data Centers

Pete Marin, President, CEO

Headquarters: Atlanta

T5 Data Centers operates 54 data centers in 22 markets, providing customized built-to-suit, wholesale turnkey and powered shell data centers focused squarely in the U.S. T5’s life-cycle services platform includes ongoing facility management and operation services. The company recently unveiled plans to build a 200MW data center campus in Georgia.

Vantage Data Centers

Sureel Choksi, President, CEO

Headquarters: Denver

Fast-growing Vantage Data Centers added 11 new campuses in 2021 following the company’s entrance into the Asia-Pacific and African markets. The company acquired Agile Data Centers as well as the data center business of PCCW last year and said it plans to invest $1 billion in its South African campus. Vantage Data Centers focuses on large cloud providers and enterprises.

Vapor IO

Cole Crawford, Founder, CEO

Headquarters: Austin, Texas

Vapor IO’s Kinetic Edge provides a network of data centers and interconnection facilities that bring cloud and colocation services to the edge of the wireless network. The company deploys software-driven, autonomous networks and data centers at the edge of last-mile networks. Vapor IO aims to lower operational costs and enable automation telemetry for optimal workload placement and resilience.

Veeam Software

Anand Eswaran, CEO

Headquarters: Baar, Switzerland

The data protection standout is a software leader in backup, recovery, monitoring and data management offerings. Veeam’s Availability Suite combines advanced monitoring and analytics with backup, restore and replication capabilities. Veeam recently hired former RingCentral President and COO Anand Eswaran as its new CEO. Veeam was acquired by Insight Partners for $5 billion in 2020.

Vertiv

Rob Johnson, CEO

Headquarters: Columbus, Ohio

The $4.5 billion data center company provides power and cooling infrastructure, thermal management, racks and enclosures, as well as a slew of monitoring, management and data center services. Vertiv has 21,000 employees with customers in over 130 counties. Vertiv recently completed its acquisition of E&I Engineering Ireland Limited, which specializes in power distribution and electrical switchgear solutions.

VMware

Raghu Raghuram, CEO

Headquarters: Palo Alto, Calif.

VMware is the market leader in data center virtualization and a growing force in hybrid and multi-cloud software. The company’s data center products span server and storage virtualization to network, security and cloud management. Last year, VMware appointed Raghu Raghuram as its new CEO with bold plans to make VMware the dominant software leader in the multi-cloud era.

vXchnge

Keith Olsen, Chairman, CEO

Headquarters: Tampa, Fla.

vXchnge’s U.S.-based data centers offer connectivity options, layered physical and logical security, and SLAs guaranteeing 100 percent uptime. vXchnge offers colocation features, including redundant infrastructure, predictable pricing and support services. The company’s in\site data center infrastructure management platform provides businesses with a customizable, 360-degree view into colocation deployments.