News

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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Professionals to Join World-Class KSA Data Center Training Academy

RIYADH, SAUDI ARABIA – December 21, 2024  – Uptime Institute today announced the opening of the Uptime Institute Data Center Academy: Saudi Arabia. The new Academy allows data center professionals to train for a career in the fast-growing data center industry from the world leader in Data Center Career Training. The first-of-its kind Academy has been created to support the Saudi Vision 2030 government program aiming to achieve the goal of increased diversification economically, socially and culturally, in line with the vision of Saudi Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohammed bin Salman. This important vision includes the development of a skilled workforce to strengthen the Kingdom’s position as a global digital hub.

Uptime Institute Data Center Academy graduates will benefit from a structured career development pathway and the ability to secure full-time employment with leading companies in the data center industry. The Academy is delivered in collaboration with Tuwaiq Academy and supported by the Ministry of Communications & Information Technology (MCT), Saudi Human Resources Development Fund, and the Communications, Space, & Technology Commission (CST). Graduates will gain industry recognized credentials and skills needed to thrive in this dynamic and lucrative data center industry field.

Uptime Institute, Data Center Academy, aims to build and strengthen a sustainable ecosystem for the development of knowledge and skills in the digital infrastructure field in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The academy will provide candidates with comprehensive training, including formal and on-the-job training, continuous assessment, and support, educating them with the skills and expertise needed to start lucrative careers in the thriving digital infrastructure industry, encompassing the data center and network cabling sectors. This initiative will contribute to enhancing the job market in the data center and related ICT sectors, building a robust national talent pool that supports the Saudi Vision 2030 Digital Transformation Agenda.

“The data center industry is one of the fastest growing markets in the world, and this continued industry expansion requires a growing and diverse workforce," said Martin V. McCarthy, CEO Uptime Institute. “The Uptime Institute Data Center Academy brings our world-class corporate learning and technical education programs to KSA, backed by practical experience and specialized domain expertise. We are honored and pleased to support the Saudi Vision 2030 Digital Transformation.”

One of the major pillars of Saudi Vision 2030 is the transformation of the unique strategic location of Saudi Arabia into a global hub connecting three continents, Asia, Europe and Africa. The countries’ geographic position between key global waterways, makes the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia an epicenter of trade and the gateway to the world. With digital infrastructure underpinning every aspect of modern life, the demand for skilled data center professionals is at an all-time high. Uptime Institute Data Center Academy has established a location in Riyadh to help meet the demand by offering world-class training and direct employment opportunities. Graduates will complete the programs well-equipped to join major digital infrastructure organizations, including data center operators, system integrators, and facility management companies.

Specialized Career Pathways:

• Technical Career Development Pathway: This option is ideal for graduates with vocational diplomas in Mechanical, Electrical or IT fields focusing on essential skills for data center technicians.
• Design and Project Management Pathway: This option is for those in Mechanical, Electrical, or IT fields, covering data center design and project management,
• Operational Management Pathway: This option is suitable for Mechanical, Electrical or IT graduates, teaching management of complex data center environments and driving further efficiencies.

Uptime Institute is the Global Digital Infrastructure Authority, and the author and exclusive certifier of the Tier Standards, which have been used in the design, construction, and operations of thousands of data center sites in more than 118 countries. Over 90,000 digital infrastructure professionals from countries around the world have looked to Uptime Institute’s education programs to help them grow their business and advance their careers. Uptime Institute offers a range of education pathways that are valuable for every point in a career for digital infrastructure professionals. This includes adolescents in apprenticeships and entry level staff to post graduate degrees in Data Center Leadership for savvy, long-serving professionals.

Tuwaiq Academy offers educational camps and programs in partnership with major international entities including Apple, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, CompTIA, Alibaba, to remain updated in the development of advanced technologies and provide qualitative educational opportunities to develop national capabilities in various fields of advanced technologies like data centers, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, and software development. By providing state-of-the-art facilities and partnering with global tech leaders, Tuwaiq Academy aims to equip individuals with the skills needed to drive the country's digital transformation and support its transition to a knowledge-based economy.

“We are pleased to further Tuwaiq Academy’s endeavour to activate our partnerships with major international entities in order to establish professional career-changing educational pathways in various fields of modern technologies, the first of their kind in the region, and to graduate distinguished national capabilities to achieve the goals of the Human Capacity Development Program according to Saudi Vision 2030,” said Mr. Abdulaziz Al-Hammadi, CEO, Tuwaiq Academy.

Uptime Institute Data Center Academy is actively engaging with local colleges and universities in the Kingdom to raise industry awareness and support among young Saudis and provide access to globally respected digital infrastructure education programs in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

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, Madrid and full-time Uptime professionals based in over 34 countries around the world. For more information, visit uptimeinstitute.com.

About Tuwaiq Academy

Tuwaiq Academy, located in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, is a leading institution dedicated to advancing technological innovation and digital skills. As part of Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030 initiative, the academy offers intensive boot camps, workshops, and training programs in fields of advanced technologies.

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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 publicrelations@uptimeinstitute.com)

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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Seven New Scope Areas and Proprietary Staff Assessment Tool Help Clients’ Strengthen Operational Excellence, Minimize Human Error, and Improve Workforce Skills

NEW YORK, NY – November 7, 2024  – Uptime Institute today announced its newly enhanced, market-leading, and globally adopted Management & Operations (M&O) Stamp of Approval. The extensive enhancements will improve clients’ ability to meet the compounding demands on their data centers, to better manage the complexities of data center infrastructure more efficiently and effectively, and to reduce operational risk by allowing them to more precisely identify and mitigate vulnerabilities in critical facilities. Participants in the new Uptime M&O program are provided with a comprehensive operations risk profile and actionable steps that drive organizational standardization throughout a site or entire data center portfolio and emphasize continuous improvement to better address the ever-evolving risks in all data center operations.

The M&O Stamp of Approval program scope includes a holistic assessment of staffing and organizational practices, maintenance, and operations activities together with specific, “fit-for-purpose” management and planning protocols for use across a data center portfolio or within a single facility. The M&O program provides a roadmap to align specific organizational strategies to help clients achieve critical business objectives for their digital infrastructure, such as risk reduction, reduced downtime, and improved operational efficiency.

In today’s market, data center operations programs and procedures must demonstrate flexibility and adaptability to address a proliferation of challenges. These include supply chain issues and staffing challenges, new industry and governmental regulations, and an increasing focus on comprehensive cyber and physical security. Even more demanding is the need for data center operations to evolve to meet the still nebulous yet rapidly scaling demands required to incorporate and support new technologies such as AI, liquid cooling adoption and the increasing power density of racks impacting the way data centers can and should be operated. Operations teams must be prepared to anticipate and respond to accelerating change, and the new M&O Stamp of Approval provides the comprehensive framework to address the ever-expanding number of challenges and risks to critical facilities.

“In this more complex and challenging environment, efficient and effective data center operations are more critical than ever,” said Christopher Brown, Chief Technical Officer, Uptime Institute. “To achieve sustainable operational resiliency, an end-to-end approach, that is both nuanced and complete, is required to identify potential vulnerabilities, weaknesses, and data center operational risks. The new M&O Stamp of Approval addresses both recent and evolving developments across digital infrastructure portfolios with varying deployments, whether Enterprise, HPC, Cloud, or Colocation.”

The new Uptime M&O program includes evaluation on two fundamental fronts, data center operations performance and data center staffing. In each area, proven Uptime protocols are deployed to identify risks on and across multiple levels, and in a variety of clear pathways to remediate the identified risk. The M&O Stamp of Approval evaluates data center operations with a focus on continuous improvement across 7 key segments of operations: Personnel Management; Maintenance; Facility Management & Optimization; Health, Safety & Security; Emergency Preparedness and Response; Planning, Coordination; and overall Quality Management.

Human capital management is essential to improved operational resilience. Having the right people with the right skills is crucial to every part of the data center lifecycle, from planning to design and from construction to operations to ensure reliability and availability. The 2024 Uptime Resiliency Survey shows that 66-80% of outages are still caused by human error, with a leading factor being individuals failing to follow procedures. Ongoing assessment of the specific human factor risks in a given location and across a portfolio operation continues to be the most potent lever that organizations can use to identify and address knowledge or confidence gaps that can lead to misapplied knowledge, lapses, and failures in a data center workplace.

In the expanded M&O program, operations staff will benefit from access to Uptime’s proprietary Competency & Confidence Assessment Modeling (CCAM®). CCAM results will identify training and growth opportunities for each member of staff, whether at the time of recruitment, onboarding, or on an ongoing basis. Managers can now quickly identify risks associated with specific individuals and mitigate these by providing a customized roadmap for precision training. M&O with CCAM® provides a complete, standardized, globally recognized assessment that enables data center operations teams to perform at their best. It ensures that hidden inefficiencies, gaps in skills or understanding and the associated risks do not impact the organization.

Data centers are an ever-increasingly complex and dynamic system of active components with an absolute dependency on qualified and well-trained staff to keep them all running. While operations tasks are too often considered as just a bundle of various tactical efforts, and teams as just a collection of individuals, assuring the overall effectiveness in improving operational resilience is the single most strategic investment that can be made to protect a digital-enabled business. Failure to recognize and address the human element as an ongoing priority can derail an organization’s entire digital business service delivery strategy.

Using the principles found in the globally recognized Tier Standard of Operational Sustainability, Uptime Institute has already assessed over 1,000 data center operations programs worldwide, helping organizations independently validate the effectiveness of their critical facilities management and the operational practices of their existing data centers. The new M&O program ensures organizations can remain competitive today and reliably prepare to meet the growing challenges faced by all data centers and digital infrastructure globally.

Learn More:

Register for “The Importance of Prioritizing Operational Resiliency and Highly Evolved Data Center Infrastructure” webinar discussing how to support reliable, secure, and effective data center operations, November 14th at 9:00 AM PST (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 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-vaunted ATD (Accredited Tier Designer) and AOS (Accredited Operations Specialist). More recently, 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 main offices in London, Sao Paulo, Dubai, Riyadh, Singapore, and Taipei, Madrid and full-time Uptime professionals based in over 34 countries around the world. For more information, please visit uptimeinstitute.com.

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