Demand for more commercial, scientific and consumer application of IT spurred the development of the MTDC sector, which offers readily available mission-critical facilities across the globe – typically near metropolitan areas where businesses and consumers concentrate. 451 Research views the MTDC sector not only as a provider of key infrastructure to the IT and telecommunication systems underpinning those applications, but also as a catalyst to the digital economy.

To see how operators view the importance of sustainability and how they go about instituting sustainability initiatives to achieve better results in their datacenter operations, Schneider Electric commissioned 451 Research, a technology market research and advisory firm, to conduct a study on MTDC operators. Schneider surveyed more than 800 datacenter service providers globally in the sector, most of which offer a mix of IT and professional services, in addition to colocation or wholesale facilities – in fact, one in three providers offer purely facilities services. Participating firms operate datacenters across more than two dozen countries, dominated by the US, the UK, China, Germany, India, France, Australia and the Netherlands.