Oversupply of oil in the global economy is set to accelerate data centre investment, according to Canalys, which forecasted that the large data centre segment will grow eight percent in 2016 as enterprises and service providers become more ambitious with the size of their facilities.

Oil prices have declined more than 70 percent since mid-2014, and will remain low as production ramps up across the US and Middle East. Data centres, with their monolithic energy consumption, will benefit from cheaper electricity as wholesale gas prices decline. Investment will focus on larger facilities, as energy becomes less of a constraint on operating costs.

Cheaper oil will accelerate a market that is already growing. Pre-eminent cloud service providers have already reacted to data sovereignty concerns by investing in the expansion of their global cloud footprint. This will continue and industry standard servers, network security and virtualisation technologies will become key growth categories. Incumbent data centre infrastructure vendors will pivot their focus towards high-end large and hyperscale facilities, but will face stiff competition from cheaper ODM alternatives.