Rising energy prices are at the top of the list of issues for IT leaders going into 2026. Research commissioned by Asanti shows that 52% of senior IT decision makers cite rising power costs as their biggest issue with current data centre providers, ahead of maintaining uptime at 48%. Energy, once treated as overhead, now influences day to day operational decisions.
The same study by Vanson Bourne found that among 100 IT leaders, the average rack density is 8kW per rack today. Within 12 months, respondents expect that to reach 11kW. That connects directly to AI workloads. 48% say AI adoption will be the biggest influence on infrastructure strategy over the next three years.
Stewart Laing, CEO of Asanti, said: “AI has moved from pilot projects to production workloads and with it comes a step-change in rack density, power demand and cooling requirements. Organisations are realising they need the right mix of facilities, partners and architectures to deliver compute and storage requirements without compromising on resilience, sovereignty or cost control.”
Power availability also features in long term planning. Over the next three years, 34% of IT leaders say rising energy costs and power availability will inform their strategy, followed by sustainability commitments not so far behind, at 33%. Cost and environmental targets now are spoken of in the same boardroom discussions.
How Exposed Are Organisations To Cyber And Outage Risk?
Cybersecurity ranks as one of the main issues. In the Asanti study, 33% list robust cybersecurity as a top concern in their current hosting environments. For the next year, 51% say cybersecurity and resilience will be their main area of infrastructure investment.
The need for action follows high profile incidents in 2025. A cyber attack on Jaguar Land Rover led to suspended production across multiple sites, with a £1.9bn cost to the economy. Marks & Spencer reported £136m in sales and downtime losses, and The Co-operative Group recorded £206m in sales and downtime losses. These cases show how outages now hit revenue and supply chains directly.
In response, 60% of organisations are strengthening cybersecurity controls and monitoring. Half are creating back up strategies across multiple data centre providers or locations, and 42% are reviewing business continuity and disaster recovery plans. A third, 33%, plan to move more workloads to on premises or colocation environments within the next year to build resilience.
Laing concluded: “As power, AI and sovereignty concerns collide, few organisations can carry all the skills they need in-house. MSPs, systems integrators and specialist data centre providers have a critical role in helping enterprises architect for higher densities, navigate cross border data complexity and build resilient multi-site infrastructure that can withstand disruption.”
More from News
- What Is The Tech Industry Doing To Ensure Responsible AI Training?
- Why Are Trusted British High Street Brands Vanishing?
- Is Stripe Buying PayPal?
- Trump Imposes 10% Global Tariff After Supreme Court Ruling – What Does This Mean For SMEs Operating Internationally?
- Chelsea FC Hop Onboard The AI Train: How Big Brands Are Partnering With AI Companies
- Agentic Commerce Is Making Unwanted Purchases For Shoppers: Have AI Agents Gone Too Far?
- Welsh Social Network Tŵt Launches New App
- Sam Altman Denies Allegations Surrounding OpenAI’s Water Usage, Reports Say
Is The UK Losing Workloads Overseas?
Location strategy is becoming more divided. 30% of organisations already use data centres outside the UK, and another 24% plan to do so in the next 12 months. At the same time, 32% say they only use UK based facilities.
Cost influences much of that thinking. One senior manager in IT at a £100.1m to £250m organisation said: “The UK is getting expensive every year and that means we have to shift our priorities to cut costs and maintain a level of profit.”
Security and compliance go in the opposite direction. A senior manager in financial services at a £500m to £1bn organisation said: “My company needs a data center in the UK for stable performance and meets high security standards.”
A board member at a managed service provider with revenue of £5.1bn to £10bn added: “Keeping all services within the UK helps us meet customer expectations around privacy, trust, and transparency, while reducing the complexity associated with managing international data transfers.”
Another senior manager in the public sector said: “We are HQ in the UK, require physical access to DC by our staff within 1hr travel, we have compliance and data sovereignty reasons to keep our data in the UK.”
This tension between cost, sovereignty and power availability defines 2026 for leaders. Data centres are now classed as critical national infrastructure. According to the research, 97% of IT decision makers say the UK’s technological progress depends on adequate data centre capacity. In that context, decisions about where data lives are no longer technical housekeeping. They influence economic resilience.
