1. Related definitions of data center industry
Data center is a complete set of complex facilities. It not only includes systems and other supporting equipment, but also includes redundant data communication connections, environmental control equipment, monitoring equipment and various security devices. Data centers include Internet data centers, which in turn include cloud computing data centers.
only provides data centers that only provide sites and cabinets, generally called DC (Data Center), that is, an organization or unit uses the infrastructure used to centrally place computer systems and related equipment such as communications and storage, and may also allow many other companies to store their equipment or data through outsourcing; a data center that has complete equipment, professional management, and complete application service platform, and provides bandwidth services, is generally called DIC and Internet Data Center; a data center that can adapt to cloud computing is a cloud computing data center.
Source: Guanyan Tianxia Data Center compiled
IDC, that is, Internet Data Center, is a special infrastructure for the safe, stable and continuous operation of computer systems (including servers, storage and network equipment, etc.). It can be understood as a "data library" that stores and operates data in a centralized manner. This space generally includes the following infrastructure (i.e. upstream): buildings, power and electrical systems, refrigeration systems, monitoring and management systems, security systems, etc. The downstream is mainly Internet companies, financial institutions, government agencies, etc.
data center scale, according to the number of standard racks, it can be divided into small, large and super large; in terms of level, it can be divided into T1, T2, T3 and T4 according to availability.
Source: Guanyan Tianxia Data Center Compilation
1. Market size of the data center industry
my country's IDC market started later than European and American countries, but benefited from the national policy guidelines such as "Internet +", big data strategy, digital economy, and the rapid development of the mobile Internet. According to the "In-depth Research and Investment Trend Analysis Report on the Development of China's Data Center Industry (2022-2029)" released by Guanyan Report Network, the market size of my country's IDC industry has continued to grow rapidly and has developed into an important construction base for global Internet data centers.
The booming development of mobile Internet, Internet+, cloud computing, big data, Internet of Things, artificial intelligence and other fields, customer demand in e-commerce, video, games and other industries has grown steadily, and my country's data scale has shown explosive growth. As a carrier of massive data, the construction of Internet data centers has become a general trend, and my country's data center market will still be in a period of rapid development in the next few years. As of 2021, the market size of my country's data center industry is about 150.02 billion yuan. In the face of a huge market size, my country's data center market structure seems to be relatively scattered.
Source: Guanyan Tianxia Data Center Organized
Due to the wide range of downstream application fields of data centers, the development of the industry is becoming increasingly relevant to the national economy. Against the backdrop of my country's economic development continuing to improve, all downstream application fields are developing rapidly. Even though some downstream areas have been temporarily impacted and their development has slowed down, the overall demand of the industry can always maintain a good level. Due to the continuous construction of the digital economy, the penetration of downstream areas can continue to expand in terms of width and depth. Therefore, my country's data center market has been in a state of continuous growth.
From the current perspective, both the policy side and the market demand side are enough to keep the data center industry in a good growth trend in the foreseeable future.
2. Data center industry supply and demand scale
1, supply scale
As a place for centralized computing and storage of data, the data center is the most basic cornerstone of cloud computing, big data, smart cities, artificial intelligence, etc., and the storage, computing, transmission, acceleration and display of data depend on it.The number of computers in data centers determines the upper limit of computing power. As of 2021, the total number of data center racks in my country is about 5.2 million, maintaining a continuous growth trend.
Source: Guanyan Tianxia Data Center Organized
Upstream infrastructure: Mainly for hardware suppliers for building data centers, including IT equipment (servers, switches, routers, optical modules, etc.), power supply equipment (UPS, transformers, etc.), land, refrigeration equipment, power generation equipment and bandwidth services provided by basic operators.
IT devices include servers, switches, routers, etc. In recent years, benefiting from the customized demand of cloud computing manufacturers, the market share of white-card servers and white-card switches has shown an upward trend. In order to regain the eroded market share, brand manufacturers began to change their strategies and successively joined the open computing organization led by cloud computing manufacturers to provide cloud computing manufacturers with the customized products they need. Server brand factories include HPE, DELL, Inspur, H3C (Transco Group), etc.; white-label factories include Quanda, Weiying, etc. Exchange-related manufacturers include Cisco, Huawei, H3 (Tianguang Co., Ltd.), Starnet Ruijie, etc. Router-related manufacturers include StarNet Ruijie, H3C (Transco Co., Ltd.), etc.
Among China's data center IT equipment, server costs account for the largest proportion, reaching 69%. The second is network equipment, security equipment, storage equipment, optical modules, etc., accounting for 11%, 9%, 6%, and 5%, respectively.
Source: Guanyan Tianxia Data Center Organized
Supporting equipment includes land, communication network, power supply, heat dissipation, racks, etc. For power supply, UPS is currently the mainstream and HVDC is expected to be gradually replaced. Traditional data centers mainly use "UPS + mains power supply solution", and related manufacturers include Huawei, Kehua Hengsheng, Yishite, etc. Compared with the UPS requiring multiple rectifications and self-current inverter, the HVDC rectifiers are fewer, which greatly reduces the losses compared to the UPS. According to data from the Institute of Information and Communications Technology, the power supply efficiency of "HVDC + direct supply of municipal power" can be increased to 94% to 95%. At the same time, HVDC is moving towards a high degree of integration, which is expected to further reduce costs and improve efficiency. In November 2019, Alibaba released the Panama power supply plan, proposing a maximum of 2.5MW, integrated, modular, efficient and highly reliable DC uninterruptible power supply, eliminating the traditional low-voltage power distribution link, reducing the footprint by 50% compared with the power supply plan of traditional data centers, and integrating further improves deployment efficiency. It is expected that the highly integrated HVDC will become the mainstream power solution for new data centers in the future. HVDC-related manufacturers include Zhongheng Electric, Delta, Power Source, etc. In addition, the data center must be equipped with a certain number of diesel generators as backup power supplies to ensure that the IT equipment can still operate normally after power outage. Related manufacturers include Cummins, Caterpillar, etc.
For heat dissipation, the liquid cooling solution has better effect than traditional air cooling. From a heat dissipation perspective, compared with traditional air-cooling technology, the thermal conductivity of liquids is 25 times that of air, and the heat carried away by liquids under the same volume is nearly 3,000 times that of air. From a noise perspective, at the same heat dissipation level, the noise of liquid cooling is 20-35 decibels lower than that of air cooling. From the perspective of energy consumption, liquid cooling saves 30%-50% of the power compared to air cooling systems. Therefore, liquid cooling technology should perform better from the perspective of heat dissipation, noise, energy consumption, etc. At present, liquid-cooled heat dissipation mainly includes three deployment methods: cold plate, immersion, and spraying. It is expected that high-density and ultra-large-scale data centers will gradually adopt liquid-cooled heat dissipation technology in the future to further reduce energy consumption and improve reliability. Currently, related manufacturers with air-cooling products include Jialitu, Yingweik, Yimikang, etc.; related manufacturers with liquid cooling technology reserves include Green Cloud Tu (Netsu Technology), Gaolan Co., Ltd., Yishite, etc.
In China's data center infrastructure, the top three cost ratios are diesel generator sets, power user stations and UPS, accounting for 23%, 20% and 18% respectively. The second is distribution cabinet, chiller unit, precision air conditioner, cabinet, headgear, electrostatic floor and cooling tower, accounting for 8%, 8%, 7%, 6%, 4%, 3% and 3% respectively.
Source: Guanyan Tianxia Data Center compiled
Network communication includes optical modules (Zhongji Xuchuang, Guangxun Technology, etc.), optical fiber cables (Changfei Optical Fiber, Fenghuo Communication, etc.), and basic network services (three major operators of mobile, telecommunications, and China Unicom). The main cabinet manufacturers include Quanda, Weiying, Kehua Hengsheng, etc.
2, demand scale
my country's digital economy is booming, and more than one billion netizens have witnessed the process of building a manufacturing power and a network power in my country. In 2021, Internet-related big data, cloud computing, artificial intelligence and other technologies will accelerate innovation, and will integrate faster and better into the entire field and process of netizens' life development. The digital economy is becoming a key force in reorganizing production and living factors, reshaping the social and economic structure, and changing the global competitive landscape, further promoting the growth of netizens. First, my country's network capabilities continue to improve. In 2021, my country's information infrastructure has been continuously optimized and its supply capacity has been significantly enhanced. The world's largest fiber and mobile broadband network has been built. The fiberization transformation has been fully completed, and the 5G network has accelerated its development. By the end of 2021, a total of 1.425 million 5G base stations have been built, and 5G mobile phone users have reached 355 million households. 16 are continuously promoted in-depth promotion of network speed and quality improvement, improve the end-to-end communication capabilities of IPv6, and promote the comprehensive development of the mobile Internet of Things. Second, the Internet continues to release the universal effect. In 2021, my country's Internet industry continued to show development vitality and resilience, and new business formats such as remote office, online medical care, and community group buying continued to develop, effectively alleviating the regional development gap and allowing more people to continuously gain benefits and satisfaction from the Internet economy, society and culture. The third is to accelerate the construction of information barrier-free construction. In 2021, all departments in my country have continuously solved the difficulties encountered by vulnerable groups in the use of intelligent technology for Internet applications. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology continued to guide the first batch of 227 websites and mobile APPs to complete the aging-friendly and barrier-free transformation evaluation on schedule, focusing on eight categories of high-frequency matters and service scenarios involving the daily life of the elderly, including travel, medical treatment, consumption, entertainment, and service, and timely formulate implementation measures to provide multi-path, multi-dimensional, and multi-functional and convenient services for the elderly to integrate into smart life.
As of December 2021, the number of Internet users in my country was 1.032 billion, an increase of 42.96 million new Internet users from December 2020, and the Internet penetration rate reached 73.0%, an increase of 2.6 percentage points from December 2020.
Source: CNNIC, compiled by Guanyan Tianxia Data Center
From the perspective of my country's scope, diversified computing power demand scenarios such as high-tech, digital transformation and terminal consumption are constantly emerging, and the computing power empowerment effect is highlighted.
In terms of high-tech, highly complex computing scenarios require more high-performance computing power support, and supercomputing can provide support for the medical, aerospace and exploration fields through high-performance computing power. At present, E-level supercomputing has become an important direction for countries around the world to conduct competitions in the supercomputing field, and my country's supercomputing still has a lot of room for improvement in computing power, computing efficiency, etc.
In terms of industrial digital transformation, modern service industries such as the Internet, communications and finance need to provide services to a large number of terminal customers. The application of digital technology in enterprises is relatively mature and has a high degree of digitalization. With the introduction of policies such as the 14th Five-Year Plan and the continuous evolution of technology research and development and business applications, traditional Chinese industrial enterprises, such as State Grid, Southern Power Grid, CNPC, Sinopec, etc., have also begun to actively promote the construction of computing power infrastructure to provide support for the digital transformation of enterprises. In terms of mobile consumption and smart terminals, the number of mobile terminal users and smart terminal devices in my country has grown rapidly in recent years, the application scenarios of terminal devices have been continuously enriched, and the demand for real-time computing power has been continuously improved.
In terms of computing power forms, the trend of diversified development of data center forms in my country is gradually emerging, and intelligent computing centers and edge data centers will maintain rapid growth.
For a long time, my country's data centers have mainly been based on general computing power, and the applications and number of supercomputing, intelligent computing and edge data centers need to be increased.With the increase in demand for high-performance computing, AI computing and edge computing in my country, supercomputing, intelligent computing and edge data centers will be further developed, and computing power will show a diversified development trend. At present, data centers with general computing power are still the main force in the market, accounting for more than 90% according to rack scale statistics; supercomputing centers are mainly used in major national scientific research fields, with fewer commercial application scenarios; smart computing centers gradually move from early experimental exploration to commercial pilot projects. Although the current scale accounts for a low proportion, with the richness of various artificial intelligence application scenarios in my country, the demand for smart computing will grow rapidly, and the expected scale growth rate will reach 70%; edge data centers can provide real-time computing power for smart terminals and IoT devices. With the acceleration of my country's digital transformation, including the development of the industrial Internet, the demand for edge computing will be further increased, and the scale growth rate of edge data centers is expected to reach 30%. The diversification of
application scenarios has put forward new requirements for the functional positioning of data centers. Data centers are not only a physical base for carrying the applications of digital technologies such as cloud computing, big data and artificial intelligence, but are also becoming an infrastructure that provides ubiquitous and inclusive computing power services, widely participating in all areas of social production and life and achieving comprehensive empowerment.
3. Data center industry segment
1. Internet field
downstream of China's data center is mainly used in Internet manufacturers, accounting for 60% of the total, more than half. The second is the financial industry, accounting for 20%; government agencies account for 10%; manufacturing industry accounts for 3%. In recent years, with the rapid development of my country's Internet industry, the demand for data centers has also continued to grow. In 2021, the market size of my country's Internet industry data centers reached 90.012 billion yuan.
Source: Guanyan Tianxia Data Center Organized
2, financial field
With the self-built private cloud, public cloud, exclusive cloud, industry cloud and other cloud computing basic resources have become an option for financial institutions, more and more existing financial business systems have been or are migrating to the cloud computing architecture, realizing more convenient system management and upgrade iteration. In addition, financial institutions generally choose to deploy incremental systems on cloud computing architecture, and even complete development, deployment, operation and maintenance based on cloud-native methods, covering various innovative applications such as industrial finance, supply chain finance, digital currency, and intelligent investment and research. IDC observed that the annual growth rate of the financial cloud solution market in 2021 exceeded that of infrastructure for the first time, and a new wave of distributed transformation of financial systems is also brewing.
2022, financial regulatory agencies successively updated the programmatic documents such as "Financial Technology Development Plan (2022-2025)" and "Guiding Opinions on Digital Transformation of the Banking and Insurance Industry". On the premise of complying with existing regulatory policies and data security laws and regulations, they put forward requirements such as "increasing the elastic supply of data center infrastructure", "building green and highly available data centers", and "laying an advanced and efficient computing power system" at the financial cloud infrastructure level; at the application system level, they take distributed transformation as the theme, and put forward requirements such as "promoting the transformation of traditional architecture to distributed architecture". The implementation of relevant policies, supporting standards and standards in the future will have a positive impact on the entire financial cloud market. In 2021, the market size of the data center in the financial industry reached US$30.004 billion, an increase of 9.456 billion yuan compared with its market size in 2020.
Source: Guanyan Tianxia Data Center Organization (WWTQ)
