Digital Realty’s mission is to provide the trusted foundation for the digital world, serving as a safe and open meeting place where companies can collaborate and innovate around data. The company aims to bring together companies, technologies, and data to power future innovation. A key goal for Digital Realty is to support the digital transformation and growth of its customers. This is reflected in its focus on delivering a full spectrum of data center, colocation, and interconnection solutions globally.
Digital Realty is recognized as a global leader in the data center industry. Its market reputation is built on providing secure, reliable, and connected data center infrastructure for a wide range of domestic and international companies. The company is committed to sustainability and responsible global citizenship, which is a notable aspect of its reputation. Digital Realty is also known for its focus on innovation, including the development of green data centers and solutions for high-performance computing like AI and hybrid cloud workloads.
Offerings, Capabilities, and Integrations
Digital Realty delivers a comprehensive spectrum of data center, colocation, and interconnection solutions. Its core offering is PlatformDIGITAL®, a global data center platform designed to enable customers to scale their digital business. This platform provides a trusted foundation for businesses to manage data gravity challenges, which is the difficulty of moving large volumes of data. Digital Realty’s global footprint of over 300 data centers across more than 50 metros provides customers with access to connected data communities that are important to them. The company’s offerings are designed to be flexible, secure, and scalable to meet the critical infrastructure needs of its clients. A key capability is the company’s Pervasive Datacenter Architecture (PDx™) solution methodology, which helps power innovation and efficiently manage data gravity challenges. This integrated approach, combining a global platform with a proven architectural methodology, gives Digital Realty a competitive edge by allowing it to support a wide range of customer needs, from single cabinet deployments to multi-megawatt hyperscale requirements. This reflects on Digital Realty’s reputation as a leading global provider of data center solutions.
Products and Services
Digital Realty’s products and services are centered around its global data center platform, PlatformDIGITAL®. The company’s offerings can be categorized into several key areas:
- Colocation: Digital Realty provides a range of colocation services, from single racks and cages to private suites. Its colocation solutions are designed to be flexible, scalable, and secure, with a commitment to sustainability. High-density colocation is also offered to support high-performance computing (HPC) and AI workloads.
- Interconnection: A key component of its offering is a suite of interconnection services that allow customers to connect to a global ecosystem of cloud and network providers. Products within this family include Cross Connect, Metro Connect, and IP Bandwidth. This facilitates the creation of secure, low-latency connections essential for modern hybrid IT environments.
- PlatformDIGITAL®: This is Digital Realty’s flagship global data center platform. It serves as a meeting place for data collaboration, enabling businesses to securely deploy, connect, and manage their critical infrastructure at any scale.
- ServiceFabric™: This is an interconnectivity and orchestration platform that simplifies the management of hybrid IT infrastructure. ServiceFabric™ Connect, a key service, allows customers to connect to anyone, anywhere, through a single port, streamlining connectivity to clouds, networks, and partners.
- Build-to-Suit and Powered Base Buildings®: For larger requirements, Digital Realty offers custom data center solutions, including build-to-suit facilities designed and constructed to a customer’s specifications, and powered base buildings that provide the foundational infrastructure for companies to build out their own data centers.
- Digital Realty Innovation Lab (DRIL): A recently launched offering, this lab provides a testing environment for partners and customers to validate AI and hybrid cloud workloads before full-scale deployment.
Target Customers
Digital Realty serves a broad and diverse customer base, ranging from small and medium-sized enterprises to large multinational corporations. The company’s clients span multiple industry verticals, including:
- Cloud and IT Services: This segment includes major cloud service providers that leverage Digital Realty’s global footprint for their core infrastructure.
- Financial Services: Financial institutions utilize Digital Realty’s secure and reliable data centers for transaction processing and housing mission-critical applications.
- Telecommunications and Social Networking: These companies rely on Digital Realty’s interconnection services to ensure high-performance connectivity for their users.
- Manufacturing, Energy, and Healthcare: Companies in these sectors use Digital Realty’s solutions for a variety of needs, including disaster recovery and data storage.
- Gaming, Digital Media, and AI: The rise of these data-intensive industries has created a growing demand for the high-density colocation and low-latency connectivity that Digital Realty provides.
These target customers benefit from Digital Realty’s ability to provide scalable and secure infrastructure that can adapt to their evolving needs. By offering a global platform with a rich ecosystem of connectivity partners, Digital Realty enables its customers to accelerate their digital transformation initiatives, reduce IT complexity, and efficiently manage their data. The ability to connect directly to cloud providers and other partners within the same facility reduces latency and can lower network costs.
Cloud Integrations and Marketplaces
Digital Realty facilitates direct, private connections to major cloud providers through its global data center platform, PlatformDIGITAL®, and its interconnection and service orchestration platform, ServiceFabric™. This approach focuses on providing the foundational infrastructure for hybrid cloud architectures, enabling customers to establish secure, low-latency links to cloud services.
Rather than maintaining a significant presence with transactable offers on public cloud marketplaces, Digital Realty provides a “Service Directory” within its ServiceFabric™ platform. This directory serves as a marketplace where partners can list their services, including connections to over 200 global cloud on-ramps. Additionally, Digital Realty offers a MarketplacePORTAL, a platform for customers to connect with other customers and service providers within the Digital Realty ecosystem.
- Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Digital Realty is an AWS Direct Connect Service Delivery Partner, offering private, dedicated connections to AWS. Digital Realty hosts AWS Direct Connect on-ramps in at least 18 locations across four continents. This allows for secure and reliable connectivity to a variety of AWS services. Digital Realty also supports AWS Outposts, enabling a consistent hybrid cloud experience.
- Microsoft Azure
Digital Realty provides dedicated access to Microsoft Azure through Azure ExpressRoute. Microsoft has deployed Azure ExpressRoute on-ramps in 15 metropolitan areas across four continents within Digital Realty’s PlatformDIGITAL®. This enables private, high-performance connectivity to Azure services. Digital Realty also supports the Azure ExpressRoute Metro service in select locations, offering enhanced resiliency.
- Google Cloud
Digital Realty offers private, dedicated access to the Google Cloud Platform via Google Cloud Dedicated and Partner Interconnect. Google Cloud has deployed its Interconnect on-ramps within 18 Digital Realty data center facilities. Customers can also leverage ServiceFabric™ to connect to any Google Cloud region from over 150 global data centers.
A search of the Google Cloud Marketplace for “Digital Realty” does not yield any specific service offerings directly from Digital Realty.
Key People
- President and Chief Executive Officer: Andrew P. Power
- Chief Financial Officer: Matt Mercier
- Chief Operating Officer: Jeff Tapley
- Chief Investment Officer: Greg Wright
- Chief Technology Officer: Chris Sharp
- Executive Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary: Jeannie Lee
- Chief Revenue Officer: Colin McLean
- Chief Human Resources Officer: Cindy Fiedelman
Key Facts
- Headquarters: Austin, Texas, US.
- Number of Employees: 3,936.
- Annual Revenue: $5.768 billion.
- Parent Company: None.
- Subsidiary Companies: Numerous, including Interxion, Ascenty, and Telx.
- Publicly Listed: Yes, NYSE: DLR.
Analyst Recognition
Digital Realty has been recognized by technology analyst groups for its role in the data center and colocation market.
- IDC has named Digital Realty a Leader in its IDC MarketScape for Worldwide Datacenter Colocation Services. Digital Realty also received recognition as a Leader in the IDC MarketScape for Worldwide Colocation and Interconnection Services and the IDC MarketScape for Asia Pacific Datacenter Operations and Management.
- Gartner includes Digital Realty in its Colocation Providers market on its Peer Insights platform.
Based on the available information, Digital Realty is not prominently featured in recent Forrester Wave or Everest Group PEAK Matrix reports for relevant categories.
