Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2014/01/13/twitter_leases_biggest_data_centre_2013/

2013 data centre rental: Rackspace? Microsoft? No. Twitter nom-nommed through most megawatts

20MW data centre biggest new deal of last year

By Gavin Clarke

Posted in On-Prem, 13th January 2014 08:03 GMT

Twitter leased the single largest data centre of any tech, cloud or media company during 2013, beating the usual suspects in the size-really-does-matter race.

The micro-blogging site topped a tech league table of the industy’s largest hitters, according to a survey of who rented and built what during 2013.

One single data centre deal put Twitter ahead of everybody else – a 20 megawatt facility operated by co-location specialist RagingWire in Sacramento, California, according to an annual data centre survey (PDF) by US property firm Avison Young.

Twitter took out more space as its service hit more than 280 million users as the business floated on the New York Stock Exchange, with a view to making money by hurling ads at the Twitter populace.

The runner-up was Rackspace, with a relatively puny 10 megawatt rental. Filling out the rest of the top five were Microsoft, Shutterfly and LinkedIn.

Overall, it was mega deals by cloud service providers and social networks that saw the volume of data centre leases jump by a quarter in 2013.

While deals surged another trend also continued: for social networks, cloud firms and tech companies to stop relying on others and to build their own.

Microsoft topped that table, beating Google and Facebook with the largest purpose-built building – its $677.6m West Des Moines, Iowa, facility.

Google occupied the second, third and fourth slots, with a range of installations coming in between $400m and $600m in Iowa, North and South Carolina.

2013, meanwhile, saw a growing market in second-hand facilities as firms built new data centres and moved on. Their existence of these second-hand units is helping bring rental prices down.

Yahoo!, Facebook, NTT and Zynga all left facilities in Ashburn, Santa Clara and California, San Jose and Santa Clara respectively - creating “second generation space.” ®