According to numbers from the Synergy Research Group this trend is driven by the demand for cloud services and consumer-oriented digital services such as social networking, e-commerce, and online gaming, which are fuelling the growth of hyperscale datacentres operated by megacorps like Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta.

These figures are based on several detailed quarterly tracking research services analysing datacentre volume and trends.

As of last year's data, hyperscale companies accounted for 41 per cent of the global datacentre capacity, but their share is rapidly increasing.

Just over half of the hyperscaler capacity consists of own-build facilities, with the remainder made up of leased server farms operated by providers such as Digital Realty or Equinix.

On-premises datacentres run by enterprises now account for 37 per cent of the total, a decrease from 60 percent a few years ago. The rest (22 per cent) is made up of non-hyperscale colocation datacentres.

The figures suggest that hyperscale volume is growing faster than colocation or on-premises capacity, at an average rate of 22 percent per year.

Synergy believes that while colocation's share of the total will slowly decrease over time, actual colocation capacity will continue to rise steadily. Similarly, the proportion of overall datacentre space represented by on-premises facilities is forecast by Synergy to decline by almost three percentage points each year, although the total capacity of on-premises datacentres is expected to remain relatively stable. Essentially, on-premises facilities are standing still in an expanding market.