Silicon Valley may be the epicentre of the vast majority of technological innovation – yet according to the latest note from Synergy Research, Dallas and Washington DC are the leading growth markets for colocation, headed by Digital Realty and Equinix.

The analyst firm noted that Dallas and Washington both grew at almost twice the rate of the national market, with revenue growth in those two areas, alongside Chicago, picking up ‘strongly’ in 2016. The top 10 metro areas accounted for almost three quarters (74%) of US retail and wholesale colocation revenues last year.

Alongside Digital Realty and Equinix, other vendors at the sharp end of the market include DuPont Fabros (Washington and North Virginia), QTS (Atlanta), and CyrusOne (Austin), with AT&T, CenturyLink, Coresite, Infomart, NTT, SunGard and Verizon also mentioned in dispatches.

“Colocation is an increasingly global market but also demands highly localised services focused on data centre facilities close to clients in key economic hubs,” said John Dinsdale, research director and a chief analyst at Synergy. “This combination of global and local factors has been a major factor in driving the ongoing industry consolidation. Another key feature in the market is the aggressive growth of cloud, which has helped the US wholesale market to grow twice as rapidly as retail colocation.”

Looking at the global perspective, a note from Synergy in January found that Equinix, Digital Realty and NTT are by some distance the three main players in the market, growing three times as fast as the overall market over the last four quarters.

The jockeying for position between the top three has also been of interest in recent months; Equinix purchased Digital Realty’s Paris operations – real estate and data centre facility – for approximately $211 million in August, as well as buying 29 data centres from Verizon for $3.6 billion in December. The previous month saw CenturyLink buying Level 3 Communications, as well as selling off 57 of its data centres to a consortium.