Led by Northern Virginia, the nation’s top seven data center markets posted 329.6 megawatts (MW)of net absorption in 2020, CBRE reported. While that total was down 11% from the 2019 peak, it was still higher than any other year on record.

Further, vacancy fell to 8.5% despite an 11% growth in new supply last year, according to CBRE’s latest North American Data Center Trends report. CBRE notes that the data center sector remained strong in 2020 as businesses reconfigured their digital infrastructure to improve their remote work capabilities, with tech giants and cloud service providers racing to meet consumer and corporate demand.

“With data usage growing at an explosive rate, we expect data center demand to increase across both primary and secondary markets in 2021,” said Pat Lynch, Denver-based senior managing director, Data CenterSolutions, CBRE. “To capitalize on this growth, data center providers will look to deliver network and interconnection offerings to better connect business-critical applications, as well as to meet anticipated demand for evolving technologies like 5G, Edge computing and the internet of things—all of which will further fuel the data center real estate market.”