2017 investment activity was heavily weighted by several large entity-level transactions, CBRE also said, as data center providers and users sought to monetize certain assets and migrate to hybrid IT environments. It pointed to Digital Realty's acquisition of DuPont Fabros and its 12 assets and BC Partners/Medina Capital/Cyxtera Technologies purchase of CenturyLink's 57-asset data center portfolio as examples.

Another trend that marked investment last year was the continued pivot by enterprise end-users from owning their own facilities toward hybrid solutions, which are a combination of cloud services, third-party colocation and owned, on-premise infrastructure. Large-scale data center operators have adopted to this trend by instituting hybrid infrastructure designs, rapidly rolling out new services to attract new users and expanded business from existing users, CBRE says.

“As the data center market matures, its success will depend on how well IT platforms integrate with real estate needs,” said Pat Lynch, senior managing director, Data Center Solutions, CBRE.

These trends — the convergence of IT and real estate, the need for future flexibility via hybrid IT solutions and cost optimization — are also driving demand for sale-leaseback opportunities. Multiple sale-leaseback transactions are slated to close in 2018, with the expectation for additional for-sale inventory, according to the CBRE report. It writes:

Enterprise users seek right-sizing through evaluation of sale and partial leaseback opportunities. CBRE expects more than $300 million in transaction volume from these deals in 2018, as corporate clients leverage their current portfolios and align with their future needs through implementation of hybrid IT solutions.