News

As corporate AI moves beyond pilots and experimentation, infrastructure designers and operators face a series of big challenges spanning power, resiliency, sustainability and automation

NEW YORK, NY – January 13, 2026 – Uptime Institute today announced the release of its Five Data Center Predictions for 2026 looking beyond the more obvious trends of 2026 and examining some of the latest developments and challenges shaping the digital infrastructure industry. The 2026 predictions focus on the continued growth of the industry and related challenges, while also recognizing AI as a powerful, transformative accelerant to growth. While AI is the key driver for a wave of investment that will underpin digital infrastructure for decades to come, the speed and ultimate size of the build-outs are unclear at this time.

“Critical digital infrastructure continues to expand strongly,” said Andy Lawrence, Executive Director of Research, Uptime Institute. “At the same time, our research shows uncertainty about how AI will reshape demand. This is complicating both capacity planning and resiliency strategies. We are also seeing increasing fragmentation in the design and deployment of data centers and expect investment and innovation in carbon capture technologies, in AI, and automation in the data center itself.”

Key findings from the 2026 Five Predictions report include:

• The AI ecosystem is taking shape — with large model AI compute and high-density infrastructure increasingly concentrated among a smaller number of large organizations.
• Developers will not outrun the power shortage — AI-driven load growth will intensify pressure on already constrained grids, creating power problems, while many developers are proposing to use onsite power generation, and lengthy timelines for large scale power deployments will prove a constraint.
• Operators look to carbon capture as emissions soar — The projected 75-125 GW growth in global data center power demand through 2030 will drive greater reliance on gas turbines for primary power. For some, carbon capture will finally emerge as a practical and even economic solution to lower greenhouse gas emissions.
• Scale adds new challenges, but resiliency will still be essential — The high costs and complexity of building high density infrastructure have thrown a spotlight on the value and cost of maintaining expensive redundant capacity. But customers and investors are unlikely to tolerate increased risks and threats to availability - nor are grid operators or operators.
• AI automation in the data center moves from pilots to production — AI-driven automation within the data center will gradually transition from experimental use to supporting daily operations. Reinforcement learning, hybrid digital twins, and early industrial copilots will support closed-loop optimization and operator decision-making, while rules-based systems will handle routine workflows. But for now, humans will remain in the loop.

Learn More:

Download the executive summary report here and register for the webinar here covering key trends and takeaways from the full report results on January 14^th at 9:00 AM PDT (9:00 AM PST, 12:00 PM EST, and 5:00 PM GMT). To join our Uptime Institute Bright Talk Channel, go to https://www.brighttalk.com/join/.

About Uptime Institute

Uptime Institute is the Global Digital Infrastructure Authority. With over 4,000 awards issued in over 122 countries around the globe, and over 1,100 currently active projects in 80+ countries, Uptime has helped tens of thousands of companies optimize critical IT assets while managing costs, resources, and efficiency. For over 30 years, the company has established industry-leading benchmarks for data center performance, resilience, sustainability, and efficiency, which provide customers assurance that their digital infrastructure can perform across a wide array of operating conditions at a level consistent with their individual business needs. Uptime’s Tier Standard is the IT industry’s most trusted and adopted global standard for the design, construction, and operation of data centers. Offerings include the organization’s Tier Standard and Certifications, Management & Operations reviews and assessments including SCIRA-FSI financial sector risk assessment, the Sustainability Assessment, and a broad range of additional risk management, performance, availability, and related offerings. Uptime Education training programs have been successfully completed by over 100,000 data center professionals, such as the much-valued ATD (Accredited Tier Designer) and AOS (Accredited Operations Specialist). The Uptime Education curriculum has been expanded by the acquisition of CNet Training Ltd. in 2023.

Uptime Institute is headquartered in New York, NY, with offices in London, Sao Paulo, Dubai, Riyadh, and Singapore, and full-time Uptime professionals based in over thirty-four countries around the world. For more information, visit uptimeinstitute.com.

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Need to Modernize to Meet Power and Density Requirements Remains Strong

NEW YORK, NY – July 30, 2025 – Uptime Institute today announced the release of its 15th Annual Global Data Center Survey 2025 revealing an innovative and resilient industry – one that is also facing rising costs, worsening power constraints, and challenges in meeting the demands for AI. As operators expand and modernize to meet power and density requirements, they must address availability, efficiency, staffing challenges, supply chain delays, and unpredictable technological advances.

“Our data shows operators are tasked with managing a lot of big strategic challenges at the same time. These include anticipating multiple technological changes, planning for expansion in spite of major constraints on power availability, and preparing for and supporting unpredictable AI workload demand,” said Andy Lawrence, Executive Director of Research, Uptime Institute. “This is a time where senior level experience is critical. But for the first time, more operators are finding it harder to recruit and retain senior people than people at an earlier stage of their career. There is a management shortage, with many experienced leaders retiring just as another phase of dramatic growth gets underway.”

Roughly one-third of data center owners and operators currently perform some AI training or inference, and a significantly greater proportion plan to do so in the future. But much of this is early stage and cautious. Uncertainty over the appropriate or likely venues for AI workloads, and apprehension over the power demands of projected NVIDIA GPU systems, is likely contributing to capacity concerns.

Now in its 15^th year, Uptime Institute’s annual survey is the most comprehensive and longest-running study of its kind. The findings of this report highlight the practices and experiences of data center owners and operators in the areas of resiliency, sustainability, efficiency, staffing, cloud, and artificial intelligence.

Key findings from the 2025 report include:

• Cost issues remain the top concern for digital infrastructure management teams in 2025 — but worries around forecasting future capacity requirements have grown significantly.
• Average PUE levels show little change for the sixth consecutive year, with improvements constrained by legacy infrastructure and some climate specific limitations to efficient cooling.
• Average server rack power densities continue to rise, with greater adoption of racks in the 10–30 kW range. Few facilities exceed 30 kW, and extreme densities are as yet rare.
• The collection and reporting of key sustainability metrics have not improved in 2025, which is likely due in part to commercial pressures to support AI, and easing regulatory pressure in some regions.
• Trust in AI for data center operations depends on the use case: most would allow its use for analyzing sensor data and predictive maintenance tasks, but not configuration changes, controlling equipment, or staffing issues.
• Impactful data center outages are gradually becoming less frequent — but one in ten still cause serious or severe disruption, underscoring the need for continued investment.
• Enterprises continue to adopt hybrid IT strategies, spanning cloud, colocation on-premises data centers. On-premises data centers remain foundational for those with large, mission critical processing needs, with 45% of IT workloads still residing in corporate facilities.
• Staffing challenges persist in 2025. Nearly two-thirds of operators report difficulty retaining staff, finding qualified candidates, or both.

About the Survey:

Uptime conducted this year’s Annual Global Data Center Survey online and via email from April to May 2025 and collected responses from more than 800 data center owners and operators. For the third consecutive year, Uptime’s survey asked data center operators to identify their management team’s top concerns related to digital infrastructure. In 2025, new response options were added to reflect the evolving challenges surrounding power availability, supply chain disruptions, and demand for AI.

The survey participants represent a wide range of industry verticals in multiple countries. Nearly half (43%) are located in North America and Europe. Approximately one in five respondents work for professional IT / data center service providers — that is, staff with operational or executive responsibilities for a third-party data center, such as those offering colocation, wholesale, software or cloud computing services.

Learn More:

Download the executive summary report here and register for the webinar here covering key trends and takeaways from the survey results on July 30^th at 9:00 AM PDT (9:00 AM PDT, 12:00 PM EDT, and 5:00 PM BST). To join our Uptime Institute Bright Talk Channel, go to https://www.brighttalk.com/join/.

About Uptime Institute

Uptime Institute is the Global Digital Infrastructure Authority. With over 3,500 awards issued in over 118 countries around the globe, and over 1,100 currently active projects in 80+ countries, Uptime has helped tens of thousands of companies optimize critical IT assets while managing costs, resources, and efficiency. For over 30 years, the company has established industry-leading benchmarks for data center performance, resilience, sustainability, and efficiency, which provide customers assurance that their digital infrastructure can perform across a wide array of operating conditions at a level consistent with their individual business needs. Uptime’s Tier Standard is the IT industry’s most trusted and adopted global standard for the design, construction, and operation of data centers. Offerings include the organization’s Tier Standard and Certifications, Management & Operations reviews and assessments including SCIRA-FSI financial sector risk assessment, the Sustainability Assessment, and a broad range of additional risk management, performance, availability, and related offerings. Uptime Education training programs have been successfully completed by over 90,000 data center professionals, such as the much-valued ATD (Accredited Tier Designer) and AOS (Accredited Operations Specialist). The Uptime Education curriculum has been expanded by the acquisition of CNet Training Ltd. In 2023.

Uptime Institute is headquartered in New York, NY, with offices in London, Sao Paulo, Dubai, Riyadh, and Singapore, and full-time Uptime professionals based in over thirty-four countries around the world. For more information, visit uptimeinstitute.com.

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Recognized in UK as having extensive experience in the digital infrastructure sector

Bury St. Edmunds, United Kingdom – 18 November 2025 – CNet Training, an Uptime Education Company, today announced that the organisation has been recognised as a “Good Provider” by Ofsted, (Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills).

CNet Training leaders were recognized by Ofsted as having extensive experience in the digital infrastructure sector. CNet Training leaders work successfully with employers across the digital infrastructure sector to understand their needs, using insights effectively to design an ambitious apprenticeship curriculum. Apprentices can gain recognized accredited qualifications in addition to their on-the-job training provided by CNet employer partners. Upon completion, students can achieve the international, industry-recognised, and highly valued level 3 award of Certified Network Cable Installer in both copper and fibre cabling and the level 4 professional award of Certified Integrated Infrastructure Technician.

“We are pleased to achieve ‘Good Provider’ results from our first Ofsted inspection, said Martin Smith, Vice President, Education Program Management, CNet Training. “I am grateful to our dedicated team, which continues to make a lasting impact on our apprentices throughout their NCI Apprenticeship experience. Since we launched the Apprenticeship Program, we are proud to have supported our employer partners in identifying, training, and employing highly motivated young professionals. We are committed to building on this success to continue to deliver the best possible outcomes for our apprentices and employers alike."

This recognition by Ofsted comes at a pivotal time as the UK government continues to strengthen its commitment to apprenticeships and vocational education as vital pathways to addressing skills gaps in critical sectors. With the digital infrastructure and communications industry experiencing unprecedented growth, driven by AI, cloud computing, and data center expansion, CNet Training's apprenticeship programs directly support the UK's ambitions to build a skilled workforce capable of maintaining the nation's position as a leading digital economy.

The 'Good Provider' rating validates CNet Training's role in delivering high-quality technical education that bridges the gap between academic learning and industry requirements, ensuring apprentices are job-ready and equipped with internationally recognized certifications that enhance their career mobility across the global data center and communication sector.

CNet Apprenticeship Programs:

CNet Training’s Network Cable Installer apprenticeship is a 12–15-month level 3 program to create the next generation of qualified network cable installation professionals. Launched in 2019, the apprenticeship was designed in collaboration with major companies in the network cabling sector. This recognizes network cable installation as a business role and provides industry-approved certification and qualification to standardize technical education for network cable installers. The Network Cable Installer Apprenticeship is designed for individuals wanting to acquire the knowledge to complete both copper and fibre cable installation projects and to demonstrate the highest levels of skills and expertise in network cabling infrastructures.

CNet Training and Uptime Education:

Acquired by Uptime Institute in 2023, CNet Training, now part of the Uptime Education business unit, designs and delivers industry recognised and respected technical education for the digital infrastructure industry globally. Uptime Education combines the power of Uptime Institute and CNet Training and is the largest global education provider dedicated to the digital infrastructure industry, including the data centre and network infrastructure sectors.

The combined educational expertise, technical competency, and global experience establishes Uptime Education as the leading education authority for the global digital infrastructure industry and the pre-eminent organisation in professional knowledge progression, designing and delivering technical education creating accreditations, certifications and qualifications from entry level to advanced specialist programs, including the Masters Degree in Data Centre Leadership and Management.

Uptime Education delivers Instructor-led programs in classroom locations across the world and via live remote attendance in addition to providing distance learning options.

For more information, visit uptimeinstitute.com and cnet-training.com/.

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7th Annual Report analyzes data on IT and data center outages including causes, costs and consequences

NEW YORK, NY – May 6, 2025 – Uptime Institute today announced the release of its 7th Annual Outage Analysis 2025 keynote report. The prevention of data center outages continues to be a strategic priority for data center owners and operators. Infrastructure equipment has improved, but the complexity of modern architectures and evolving external threats presents new risks that operators must actively manage.

For the fourth consecutive year, Uptime Intelligence Research suggests that overall outage frequency and the general level of reported severity continue to decline. However, cyber security incidents are on the rise and often have severe, lasting impacts.

“Outages overall have slowed down,” said Andy Lawrence, founding member and executive director, Uptime Intelligence. “Data center operators are facing a growing number of external risks beyond their control, including power grid constraints, extreme weather, network provider failures and third-party software issues. And despite a more volatile risk landscape, improvements are occurring.”

Uptime’s annual outage analysis is unique in the industry, and draws on multiple surveys, information supplied by Uptime Institute members and partners, and its database of publicly reported outages.

Key Findings Include:

• Outages are becoming less frequent and less severe relative to the rapid growth of digital infrastructure. This trend has held for several years, underscoring industry progress in risk management and reliability.
• Power remains the leading cause of impactful outages. Outages from IT and networking issues increased in 2024, totaling 23% of impactful outages. This trend reflects the long-term move toward colocation providers, cloud, and other third-party services. While outsourcing may reduce the risk for some enterprises, major failures still occur, sometimes with serious consequences. This rise is likely caused by increased IT and network complexity, leading to issues with change management and misconfigurations.
• Software-based and distributed resiliency tools are expanding. These systems improve uptime but can also introduce new risks and complexities. The use of software-based resiliency strategies alongside physical failover/redundancy is undoubtedly contributing to overall improvements in availability. However, the added complexity brings its own challenges and can blur lines of responsibility for failures, complicating root cause analysis and outage classification.
• The pace of industry transformation is accelerating. Soaring demand for AI is straining existing infrastructure designs — especially around power and cooling — while electricity grid limitations and global trade tensions introduce new uncertainty in supply chains and expansion plans. Together, these pressures could eventually affect the stability of current reliability trends.

For 2025, the proportion of human error-related outages caused by failure to follow procedures rose by ten percentage points compared with 2024. The failure of staff to follow procedures has become an even greater cause of outages than in the previous year, suggesting a major opportunity to reduce incidents through training and process review. The overwhelming majority of human error-related outages involve ignored or inadequate procedures. Nearly 40% of organizations have suffered a major outage caused by human error over the past three years. Of these incidents, 85% stem from staff failing to follow procedures or from flaws in the processes and procedures themselves. The reason for this rise is unclear but may be a consequence of the rapid growth of industry and the resulting staff shortages in many regions. While improving documentation and processes remains important, greater focus on staff training and real-time operational support may reduce risks more effectively.

Over the nine years that Uptime has been tracking publicly reported outages, third-party IT and data center service providers — including cloud and internet giants, telecommunications, and colocation companies — have accounted for about two-thirds of those reported.

For 2024, outages attributed to digital service providers increased, while those from cloud/internet giants declined, possibly due to hyperscalers’ investments in distributed resiliency and regional failover. For the third consecutive year, the financial sector saw a decline in outage frequency compared with the long-term average since 2020. This improvement may reflect the impact of stricter regulations and heightened oversight following several major, high-profile outages prior to 2021.

To Learn More: For further insight into Uptime’s latest research on digital infrastructure failures, register to attend the upcoming 2025 Annual Outage Analysis webinar on Wednesday, May 7th at 9:00 a.m. PDT here. A 9-page Executive Summary, an excerpt of a much more detailed, 26-page report, is available for download here.

To access the entire Annual Outage Analysis 2025 Report and Uptime Intelligence on an evaluation basis, please visit https://intelligence.uptimeinstitute.com/request-evaluation. The full report is available to Uptime Network members and Uptime Intelligence subscribers. (Press: email [email protected])

About Uptime Institute

Uptime Institute is the Global Digital Infrastructure Authority. With over 3,500 awards issued in over 118 countries around the globe, and over 1,100 currently active projects in 80+ countries, Uptime has helped tens of thousands of companies optimize critical IT assets while managing costs, resources, and efficiency. For over 30 years, the company has established industry-leading benchmarks for data center performance, resilience, sustainability, and efficiency, which provide customers assurance that their digital infrastructure can perform across a wide array of operating conditions at a level consistent with their individual business needs. Uptime’s Tier Standard is the IT industry’s most trusted and adopted global standard for the design, construction, and operation of data centers. Offerings include the organization’s Tier Standard and Certifications, Management & Operations reviews and assessments including SCIRA-FSI financial sector risk assessment, the Sustainability Assessment, and a broad range of additional risk management, performance, availability, and related offerings. Uptime Education training programs have been successfully completed by over 90,000 data center professionals, such as the much-valued ATD (Accredited Tier Designer) and AOS (Accredited Operations Specialist). The Uptime Education curriculum has been expanded by the acquisition of CNet Training, Ltd. in 2023.

Uptime Institute is headquartered in New York, NY, with offices in London, Sao Paulo, Dubai, Riyadh, Singapore, and Taipei, and full-time Uptime professionals based in over thirty-four countries around the world. For more information, visit uptimeinstitute.com.

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