Baron Fung

Vice President

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 3 China Cloud: Alibaba, ByteDance, Tencent
  • Other Major Cloud: Apple, CoreWeave, IBM, Oracle
  • AI Model Builders
  • Neocloud
  • Rest-of-Cloud
  • 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:

  • How fast will global data center capex grow, and which customer segments will drive growth?
  • How do investment trends differ across cloud, AI-specialized, colocation, telco, and enterprise segments?
  • How do capex trends differ among major US and China hyperscale cloud providers?
  • How is AI reshaping spending across compute, storage, networking, and physical infrastructure?
  • How will power availability, infrastructure constraints, and rising costs affect future deployments?
  • What do capex trends imply for data center infrastructure and component suppliers?

To answer these and other important questions, Dell’Oro Group delivers quarterly reports and five-year forecast reports on 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 an outlook on the market, the top-ten Cloud service providers, and the major customer segments.

Spending and unit shipments for accelerated and general-purpose servers—which drive overall data center spending across facilities, networking equipment, and other supporting infrastructure—are important measures tracked in the report.

Core Metrics and Coverage

    • Server Capex, Unit Shipments, and Installed-base
    • Other Data Center Capex (Network and Physical Infrastructure)
    • Number of data centers, regions, and availability zones globally and by region

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; H3C; Huawei; Lenovo; IBM; NetApp; Supermicro; xFusion; ZTE; and White Box.

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

In January and July, Dell’Oro Group publishes Data Center 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 3 China Cloud
    • Other Major Cloud
    • AI Model Builders
    • Neocloud
    • Rest-of-Cloud
    • Colocation
    • Telco
    • Enterprise

The forecasts also break out the following data center infrastructure equipment markets and their underlying subsegments:

    • Servers—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.