For the first time, more corporate IT workloads run in third-party facilities than in enterprise-owned server farms, according to Uptime Institute’s Global Data Center Survey 2026. The annual survey, which polled more than 800 datacenter owners and operators worldwide (over half based in North America and Europe), found third-party sites now account for 46 percent of IT workloads, compared with 44 percent still running in-house. The remaining 10 percent of respondents said they rely on IT rooms and server cabinets rather than dedicated facilities.
Uptime’s analysts expect the on-premises share to hold steady through 2028, while third-party hosting grows to 48 percent, largely at the expense of those smaller IT room and cabinet setups.
Power density keeps climbing
The survey also found that average rack power density has crossed 11 kW for the first time, driven by a broad shift toward more powerful hardware and a small cluster of new high-density facilities running racks above 30 kW. Strip out those outliers and the more typical average sits at 7.8 kW, only slightly higher than 7.5 kW in 2025.
Most facilities still have no racks running at 30 kW or above, but the share that do has grown to 24 percent, up from 19 percent last year. Much of that increase came in the 50 kW-plus range, including some operators deploying AI and GPU servers into racks built for over 100 kW.
Interestingly, some operators are shortening hardware refresh cycles to under four years, a reversal from the trend among major hyperscalers like Microsoft, Google, and Meta, which have stretched server lifecycles to 6 or 7 years to reduce depreciation costs.
Outages improve, but costs rise
Outage rates improved for a sixth consecutive year, with three percentage points fewer respondents reporting an outage in the past three years. Uptime cautions against complacency, however, since risk factors such as unstable power, grid reliability issues, supply chain constraints, and extreme weather are all increasing.
The financial stakes of outages are also rising as businesses grow more dependent on digital infrastructure. This year 71 percent of respondents said their most damaging outage cost at least $100,000, up sharply from 57 percent a year earlier.
Staffing gaps widen
Skills shortages remain a persistent challenge, with the biggest gaps reported in electrical roles (38 percent), junior-level operations (38 percent), operations management (35 percent), and mechanical roles (34 percent). More than half of operators (53 percent) said they struggled to fill vacant positions, up from 46 percent last year.
Uptime also flagged growing financial pressure across the industry, citing rising costs for power, staff, and equipment, especially for AI infrastructure, alongside mounting concerns over capacity forecasting and supply chain disruption.