Equinix has no plans to let go of its position as the world’s largest colocation provider, with the data centre services provider retaining its crown as the global market leader.

The hyperscale operator has made some strong M&A deals over the past year, which gives the company a market share of 11% in Q1 2017, according to Synergy Research Group.

One of the deals that significantly added to this was Equinix’s $3.6bn deal with Verizon to acquire 29 of its data centres. The deal was closed in May 2017.

The new assets, now acquired by Equinix, are spread across 15 cities in both North and Latin America. This deal alone brought Equinix’s global footprint to over 175 IBX data centres across 44 markets.

Following close behind Equinix in the market is Digital Realty, which recently began making investments to expand its global footprint. The colocation provider recently embarked on one of the largest M&A deals in the data centre industry, with a $7.6bn merger with DuPont Fabros.

Read more: Equinix, Verizon complete $3.6 billion data centre deal

This deal brought Digital Realty’s market share up to 7% in Q1 2017. In major regions, Digital Realty stood as the major leader in North America whilst Equinix remains the leader in EMEA, according to Synergy Research Group.

Eric Schwartz, President of EMEA, Equinix told CBR: “We view this merger as a move for Digital Realty to add wholesale business in the US, as the demand for cloud continues to grow.

“We see strong demand for cloud across our global footprint of more than 175 data centres in 44 markets, with major CSPs deploying edge nodes to support enterprises going through IT transformation and ultimately move their infrastructure closer to the digital edge.”

The next colocation provider that ranks in at third place behind Digital Realty is NTT, with 6% global colocation revenues.

It was found that the major countries with a noticeable increase in growth rates were all across the APAC region, such as China, Japan and Australia.

John Dinsdale, Chief Analyst and Research Director, Synergy Research Group said: “The aggressive growth of hyperscale data centre operators and other cloud and hosting companies is helping to drive demand for data centre footprint across all regions, while many enterprise customers require their data centre operators to span multiple metros and countries.

“Equinix and Digital Realty were already growing much more rapidly than the overall market, and these deals will help them further distance themselves from the competition.”