Cloud computing appeared to experience a bit of a lull in the market in 2019. Raymond Hawkins, the host of Not Your Father’s Data Center and Chief Revenue Officer for Compass Datacenters, noted that the apparent 2019 lull came after a robust year in 2018.

There are two primary questions that come from this observation. Was there actually a lull? And what does 2020 look like?

Hawkins posed those questions to Ty Miller and Joe Goldsmith on a recent episode of Not Your Father’s Data Center Podcast.

Goldsmith said that he thinks the market volatility is regional.

First, he noted that he separates the corporate enterprise side of the business, because it is a bit more predictable. However, that is not the case for the cloud and service delivery portion of the market.

“[For] the folks that are making money with (cloud computing), it has been incredibly volatile,” he said. “I think that some providers are building out infrastructure hoping for more business, and there are some regions wherein they are so far behind the capacity curve, they’re scrambling to catch up. “

Miller said that he doesn’t think there was a lull at all.

He cited an example in Northern Virginia that may have looked like a lull. However, Ty noted that absorption was up from 2018, but was outpaced by supply.

He also echoed comments by Goldsmith regarding the hybrid enterprise portion of the business.

“Five years ago, you’d see a large enterprise deployment in the megawatt measurement range between 1 and 2, or even 5 megawatts,” Miller said. “Now, about 75% of that workload seems to be going to the cloud. Those are from entities who formerly procured as many as 5-times that amount.”

He said this speaks to massive growth.

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