New data from Synergy Research Group shows that six metro areas account for 59% of U.S. retail and wholesale colocation revenues, with New York and Washington DC alone accounting for 30%. Among these six metros Silicon Valley and Washington have seen the strongest revenue growth rate over the last year, with Silicon Valley growing at twice the speed of the national market. Growth in Dallas is also outpacing the national average. Equinix is the market leader in four of those six major metros and would also have been the leader in New York but for Digital Realty’s acquisition of Telx which enabled it to leapfrog Equinix. Digital Realty is also the market leader in the Dallas metro. Other operators that feature strongly in the market share rankings for the six metros include CyrusOne, DuPont Fabros, CenturyLink, Verizon, Coresite, SunGard, NTT, AT&T and Infomart.

The research also shows that New York is the largest metro market for colocation in the world, though it is closely followed by London, Tokyo and Washington DC. In addition to these four, the ranking of the top ten metros in the world for retail and wholesale colocation is rounded out by Silicon Valley, Dallas, Singapore, Frankfurt, Chicago and Los Angeles.

“While colocation is an increasingly global market, in many ways it is also a highly localized service that is dependent on having access to specialized data center facilities that are close to the target client base. It is this combination of global and local factors that is now driving consolidation and M&A activities in the colocation industry,” said John Dinsdale, a Chief Analyst and Research Director at Synergy Research Group. “At Synergy we have been producing detailed quarterly tracking statistics for worldwide and country-level colocation markets for over three years, but have now had to start drilling this down to the major metro markets in order to better understand local market dynamics.”