Baron Fung

Senior Research Director

Dell’Oro Group’s Data Center IT Capex reports track global infrastructure spending by hyperscale cloud service providers and enterprises, a market on pace to exceed $1 trillion in 2026.

The reports provide detailed analysis of data center capital expenditures, with specific emphasis on IT equipment such as servers and storage systems, as well as metrics including installed server base, number of regions and availability zones, and global infrastructure footprint.

The report focuses on how hyperscale cloud investments are shaping the broader data center infrastructure market. As data center capex represents the largest share of Cloud service provider spending, even small fluctuations in spending by these companies can create significant ripple effects across the global supply chain. To provide a comprehensive view of the market, Dell’Oro Group tracks capex across key customer segments, including:

  • Top 4 US Cloud: Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft
  • Top 4 China Cloud: Alibaba, Baidu, ByteDance, Tencent
  • Top 4 Tier 2 Cloud: Apple, CoreWeave, IBM, Oracle
  • Rest-of-Cloud: includes neoclouds and AI model developers
  • Colocation
  • Telco
  • Enterprise

Data center capital spending is a critical indicator of demand across the entire IT infrastructure ecosystem. Investments in servers—particularly accelerated systems for AI workloads—drive spending across facilities, networking, and storage, influencing vendor revenues and supply chain dynamics. At the same time, the expansion of cloud regions and availability zones reflects long-term growth strategies, while shifts in spending allocation between AI and general-purpose infrastructure are reshaping technology roadmaps and competitive positioning.

With this report, you will be able to answer critical business questions including:

  • What were the primary drivers of cloud service provider capex this quarter, and how is it being allocated across servers, networking, and facilities?
  • How is capital spending being distributed between accelerated AI-optimized server platforms and general-purpose compute and storage infrastructure?
  • What are the strategic implications of cloud spending trends for global supply chain vendors and regional market outlooks?
  • What is the current global footprint of cloud service providers, and how are their expansion plans impacting legacy Enterprise growth?
  • How are emerging technologies like edge computing shaping the long-term infrastructure requirements for the Telco segment?

To answer these and other important questions, Dell’Oro Group delivers quarterly reports and five-year forecast reports on the Data Center Capex.

Data Center IT Capex Quarterly Reports

Data Center Capex Quarterly Reports

The Dell’Oro Group Data Center Capex report includes quantitative and qualitative information, and outlook on the market and the top-ten Cloud service providers and the major customer segments. Spending (and volume) on servers (accelerated and general-purpose), which drives the overall spending on data centers and its constitutes such as facilities and networking equipment, is an important measure that we track and rely on in this report.

Core Metrics and Coverage

    • Data center capex
    • Server capex (accelerated versus general-purpose)
    • Server installed-base and unit shipments
    • Number of data centers, regions, and availability zones globally and by region

In addition, the report contains market-level and vendor revenue and unit market share information on the following technology segments:

    • Servers: (accelerated versus general-purpose)
      • Blade Servers
      • High-Density Servers
      • Stand-Alone Servers
    • Storage Systems
      • All Flash Arrays
      • Disk and Hybrid Arrays

Major vendors tracked include: Dell Technologies; Hewlett Packard Enterprise; IEIT Systems; Huawei; Lenovo; IBM; NetApp; Supermicro; xFusion; ZTE; and White Box. We also provide market-level information by region including North America, EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa), China, APAC excl. China, and CALA (the Caribbean and Latin America).

Data Center IT Capex 5-Year Forecasts

Dell’Oro Group publishes Data Center IT Capex 5-year forecasts offering a complete overview of the market with historical data from 2014 to the present. The forecasts provide a comprehensive overview of market and technology trends and include tables covering data center and server capex and server unit shipments forecasts for the following customer segments:

    • Top 4 US Cloud
    • Top 4 China Cloud
    • Top 4 Tier 2 Cloud
    • Rest-of-Cloud
    • Colocation
    • Telco
    • Enterprise

We also breakout the following markets for data center infrastructure equipment, along with the underlying sub-segments:

    • Server (accelerated and general-purpose): Modular Blade, Modular High-Density, and Stand-Alone Server revenues and units
    • Storage System: All Flash Array, Disk and Hybrid Array revenues
    • Networking and physical infrastructure equipment revenues
    • Regions: North America, EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa), China, APAC excl. China, and CALA (the Caribbean and Latin America).

Click here to contact us to learn more about the Data Center IT Capex research program and available purchasing options.