According to South China Morning Post, Internet Data Center (IDC) industry is a crucial component of the strategic emerging industry, which plays an important role in promoting and driving economic transformation and upgrading and social development, and is also a key industry leading the innovation and development of the information industry in the future. Recently, GDS, the leader of the IDC industry, officially launched its public offering on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
Unique platform attracts renowned customers in different industries
GDS is the largest carrier-neutral data center service provider in China, focusing on developing and operating high-performance data centers, with a 21.9% revenue market share of the carrier-neutral market in 2019. As of June 30, 2020, GDS operated 42 self-developed data centers also with 17 data centers under construction. As of the same date, GDS had an aggregate net floor area of 266,260 sqm in service, 94.1% of which was committed by customers.
At the same time, GDS has established good relationship with large, fast-growing, and diversified customers, allowing its customers to expand rapidly. As at June 30, 2020, GDS has served 673 customers, including hyperscale cloud service providers, large internet companies, financial institutions, telecommunications carriers and IT service providers, and large domestic private sector and multinational corporations. Many of GDS’s customers are leaders in their respective industries. Among them, there are renowned internet giants and cloud service providers such as Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu, Microsoft, ByteDance, JD, etc.
Strategic layout strengthens leading market position
Strategically, GDS firmly seizes the opportunity of rapid growth in cloud computing and emerging technologies, enabling cloud service operators to expand their data center capacity flexibly and continuously in key markets. GDS also leverages the operational benefits provided by its unique platform of interconnected data centers in Tier 1 markets hosting leading clouds to become the preferred provider of cloud-related managed services to enterprise customers. In addition, GDS will continue to expand unique platform of interconnected, high-performance data centers in China’s Tier 1 markets, and will assist its business growth by acquiring data centers in the first-tier markets, thereby further strengthening the Company’s core competitive advantages in the domestic market, consolidating the Company’s leading market position.
At present, the business landscape of GDS has been extended to four major domestic regions, including the Yangtze River Delta, Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, and Chengdu-Chongqing region. GDS also continues to promote the national regional layout. In addition, in order to meet the huge market demand, the company may further expand its business to overseas markets such as Southeast Asia in the future.
In recent years, relevant departments in China have issued a series of regulations, standards and relevant policies to promote the development of the cloud computing industry. Benefiting from the rapid development of cloud computing, big data and the Internet, the demand for IDC in China has grown rapidly, and the volume of data transmitted, processed and stored has increased by multiples, demand for carrier-neutral data center services in China estimated to increase by a CAGR of 31.8% in the next five years, according to iResearch. The booming cloud computing market will drive a large amount of demand for data centers. In addition, the PRC government has promoted the concept of “new infrastructure” which includes hyperscale data centers, artificial intelligence and industrial internet. Such policy orientation is ushering in new waves of investment at all levels of the economy, which will give rise to numerous opportunities benefiting the data center industry. As a leading company in the IDC industry, GDS will continue to benefit from it in the future. After listing, GDS will have long-term investment value.