Case Study — Apr 24, 2025
An Energy Company Seeks to Power the Future of AI-Driven Datacenters
THE CLIENT: A global integrated energy and chemical company
USERS: Strategy and market analysis team
Cloud service providers such as Microsoft Corp., Alphabet Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. are ramping up investments to secure their place in the rapidly expanding generative artificial intelligence (AI) sector. Capital expenditures by the five largest cloud infrastructure providers surged 57% year over year in Q2 2024, reaching $55 billion, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence.1 Most of this spending is directed toward infrastructure and datacenters needed to host AI capabilities, reinforcing these assets' critical role in digital transformation.
Recognizing the rising demand for energy to support these evolving datacenter services, the strategy and market analysis team at a leading global oil and gas company sought to better understand the supply and demand dynamics shaping the industry. With the rapid expansion of cloud infrastructure and the increasing need for AI-ready capabilities, the team needed independent, data-driven insights to guide their investment strategy for power grid infrastructure. Their goal was to accurately assess market trends and anticipate future energy requirements, to ensure they could effectively support the next generation of digital infrastructure.
Pain Points
Members of the client’s strategy and market analysis team required granular insights specific to datacenters. They sought to accurately assess current datacenter capacity and capabilities while also identifying key near-term developments. They aimed to analyze power consumption, space utilization and demand trends. The client also wanted to understand the competitive landscape and looked for a research partner to help evaluate market positioning and anticipate potential shifts. Finally, the client sought to examine the impact of emerging technologies and services shaping the datacenter industry, to help the company stay ahead of industry advancements and evolving market dynamics.
The Solution
Specialists from S&P Global Market Intelligence 451 Research, the company’s enterprise technology research group, outlined how the strategy and market analysis team could evaluate the datacenter market using 451 Research's primary research gathered from site visits, vendor briefings, desk research and surveys. They identified the following tools as key to alleviating the client’s pain points.
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Assess current and future datacenter energy demand and competitive landscape by geography |
The Datacenter KnowledgeBase (DCKB) enables users to assess current datacenter facilities and owners across geographies. With asset-level data for 12,960+ datacenter facilities globally, it provides 100+ data points per facility, including: ― Location and ownership details. ― Capacity (space/power/racks). It also tracks facilities under construction or planned, land held for future builds, and provides five-year country-level forecasts for capacity-related metrics. |
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Gain a view of the future |
Market Monitor & Forecast reports provides five-year country level forecast for capacity related metrics such as space, power, racks and demand segmented by ownership categories, including crypto mining, enterprise, hyperscale and leased datacenter types. Datacenter Market reports offer in-depth analysis of supply, demand, and key market drivers in specific locations, complementing Market Monitor and the Datacenter KnowledgeBase. Market Insight, a short-form reports designed to deliver daily updates on key datacenter providers, developments, and industry trends. Our analysts engage with thousands of companies, providing expert analysis and data-driven insights to keep you informed. |
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Determine levers of demand and potential spend |
Voice of the Enterprise provides survey-based data and insights from a panel of enterprise IT decision-makers to assess the business challenges, priorities and strategies for datacenter-related technologies and services. This helps users calibrate product, marketing, sales and investment strategies to address: ― Enterprise customer sentiment. ― Demand and plans around technology adoption. ― Spending and budget changes and influences. ― Vendor perceptions. ― IT pain points and challenges. ― IT priorities and project drivers. |
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Tap into analyst expertise |
On-demand analyst inquiry provides access to 451 Research’s entire quantitative datacenter team for questions about the data or the methodologies used. |
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Key Benefits
Members of the strategy and market analysis team believed that the granular data and deep insights provided by 451 Research would be extremely valuable for analyzing the impact of power consumption from datacenters on their current power grid and likely expansion requirements. The team subscribed to the 451 Research services and are now able to:
- Understand the rapid growth of datacenters by key segments.
- See where development is taking place by region.
- Gain insights into the thinking of IT professionals.
- Track innovations within the datacenter segment.
- Assess potential infrastructure investments to ensure the business is positioned to support market demands.
- Minimize the risk of missing opportunities due to an inadequate understanding of market dynamics and trends.
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