AI infrastructure increases rack power, requiring operators to upgrade IT cooling. While some (typically with rack power up to 50 kW) rely on close-coupled air cooling, others with more demanding AI workloads are adopting hybrid air and DLC.
Data centers are being included in national development plans as a source of economic growth. While this will ease operators’ access to land and power, it will also lead to more scrutiny from government and regulation.
A new wave of GPU-focused cloud providers is offering high-end hardware at prices lower than those charged by hyperscalers. Dedicated infrastructure needs to be highly utilized to outperform these neoclouds on cost.
The US government is applying a new set of rules to control the building of large AI clusters around the world. The application of these rules will be complex.
Data center infrastructure management software is widely used but rarely utilized at full potential. Adopting the latest capabilities and optimizations could achieve better resiliency and efficiency.
The data center industry’s growth projections can be met by combining energy supply growth and demand reduction. Highly utilized IT infrastructure and efficient software can mitigate demand growth while delivering needed IT capacity.
Hyperscalers design their own servers and silicon to scale colossal server estates effectively. AWS uses a system called Nitro to offload virtualization, networking and storage management from the server processor onto a custom chip.
If adopted, the UNEP U4E server and storage product technical specifications may create a confusing and counter-productive regulatory structure. The current proposals are as likely to limit as improve data center operations' efficiency
This summary of the 2025 predictions highlights the growing concerns and opportunities around AI for data centers.
Power and cooling requirements for generative AI training are upending data center design and accelerating liquid cooling adoption. Mainstream business IT will not follow until resiliency and operational concerns are addressed.
Dedicated GPU infrastructure can beat the public cloud on cost. Companies considering purchasing an AI cluster need to consider utilization as the key variable in their calculations.
Uptime Intelligence looks beyond the more obvious trends of 2025 and identifies examines some of the latest developments and challenges shaping the data center industry.
Power remains the top spending priority for most operators in 2025, but enterprises are set to increase IT hardware spending.
The EU’s NIS 2 directive requires all organizations operating in Europe to comply with 10 essential cybersecurity measures, but many data center operators remain unprepared.
The Uptime Intelligence research agenda includes a list all published and planned reports from January 2024 to March 2025, and is focused on Uptime Intelligence primary coverage areas: 1) power generation, distribution, energy storage; 2) data center...
Dr. Tomas Rahkonen
Peter Judge
Dr. Owen Rogers
Daniel Bizo
Max Smolaks
John O'Brien
Jay Dietrich
Douglas Donnellan
Jacqueline Davis
Andy Lawrence