Data center hardware spending is forecast to total $106.4 billion in 2012, and surpass $126.2 billion in 2015. In terms of final year-end data, worldwide data center hardware spending is projected to reach $98.9 billion in 2011, up 12.7 percent from 2010 spending of $87.8 billion, according to Gartner, Inc.

Data center hardware spending includes servers, storage and enterprise data center networking equipment.

The very largest size category of data centers (which is data centers with more than 500 racks of equipment) will increase its share of spending from 20 percent in 2010 to 26 percent in 2015, driven by the cloud and the shift from internal data center provision to external.

In 2010, 2 percent of data centers contained 52 percent of total data center floorspace and accounted for 63 percent of data center hardware spending. In 2015, 2 percent of data centers will contain 60 percent of data center floorspace and account for 71 percent of data center hardware spending.

Additional information is available in the Gartner report “Forecast: Data Centers, Worldwide, 2010-2015”. (http://www.gartner.com/id=1818517)

Source: Gartner, Inc. www.gartner.com.

What’s your take on this? Leave a comment and get the conversation going.