Report on state of data centres: ‘Unprecedented innovation, explosive data centre growth, and market acceleration’

A new report on the state of the data centre industry says that it is navigating “unprecedented innovation, explosive data centre growth, and market acceleration.”

“The data centre has evolved from a supporting player to the cornerstone of digital transformation. It’s the engine behind the most innovative solutions shaping our world today,” said Bill Kleyman, who is CEO and co-founder of Apolo.us and program chair for next month’s AFCOM Data Centre World event. “This is a time to embrace bold experimentation and collective innovation, push boundaries, adopt transformative technologies and focus on sustainability to prepare for what lies ahead.”

Kleyman also said: “In the past year, our relationship with data has shifted profoundly. This isn’t just another tech trend; it’s a foundational change in how humans engage with information.”

That shift is driving major change within data centres, and the report concludes that “every data centre is becoming an AI data centre.”

Among the highlights of the report, which is based on a survey of data centre operators:

The report found that AI data centres are booming, with 80% of survey respondents expecting “significant increases in capacity requirements due to AI workloads.” Nearly 65% of survey respondents said that they were actively deploying AI-capable solutions in their facilities.

Rack density more than doubled from 2021 to the most recent report, and nearly 80% of respondents expect that rack density will be pushed further due to AI and high-performance workloads. This means that data centre managers are looking to improve air flow, adopt liquid cooling and also use new sensors for monitoring.

More than 100 megawatts of new data centre construction has been added every single month since late 2021, according to the report, which found that U.S. colocation data centre market” doubled in size in four years with vacancy rates at a new record low and rents steadily increasing.”

Data centre operators expect that over the next three years, their number of data centres will increase from an average of one, to an average of six.

However, even as data centres expand, the rising costs of cloud computing are driving an increase in data repatriation (bringing data back on-site), as well as closer tracking and analysis of cloud spending.

Solar energy is the key renewable energy source for data centres, according to 55% of survey respondents. But 33% also cited nuclear power as an important renewable, up 12% from last year.

The top five security and infrastructure threats identified by respondents were ransomware, internal or external human threats, advanced persistent threats targeting IT and corporate data; distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks; and data loss or exfiltration.

Operational and capital expenditures are rising for data centres, led by energy and personnel costs.

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