Building a Market Evaluation Framework for Data Center Expansion

Client

Data Services Company

Opportunity

A data center company with four U.S. facilities was exploring expansion into Tier 2 and Tier 3 markets but lacked a consistent way to compare potential locations.

Outcome

Delivered a ranked shortlist of priority markets and scenario based views that allowed the team to evaluate tradeoffs based on risk tolerance. The client has since received a $200M growth investment and has plans to launch in 3 new markets in 2026.

A structured market evaluation framework that helped a data center provider compare 119 markets and prioritize expansion opportunities based on infrastructure, demand, and competitive dynamics.

A data center company with four U.S. facilities was seeking to expand into new Tier 2 and Tier 3 markets but lacked a consistent way to determine where it had the strongest opportunity to compete.

While the team had access to some market data, they did not have a standardized set of inputs or a repeatable scoring methodology to compare markets across key assets such as land availability, power access, fiber connectivity, and competitor presence. As a result, leadership needed a more structured and fact based approach to prioritize geographic expansion.

CMG worked with the client to identify and vet both free and paid data sources and organize them into a usable dataset for market comparison. From there, the team developed more than 20 evaluation criteria spanning the competitive landscape, market attractiveness, customer demand, and capability alignment.

Using these inputs, CMG built a market analysis framework and scoring methodology to evaluate 119 potential markets. The framework tied prioritized criteria to specific data sources and thresholds, generating a ranked output and allowing the team to view multiple scenario perspectives.

The final analysis delivered a prioritized shortlist of markets along with scenario based insights that allowed leadership to evaluate the upsides and tradeoffs of different locations based on risk tolerance. The work also identified a group of “look alike” markets with similar interconnect and competitive profiles to the top contender, helping the client better understand where they had the strongest right to win.

In addition to the ranked market view, CMG delivered a market analysis tool the client can continue to update and modify on their own to validate opportunities and and has since expanded to two more locations.