Investments in datacenters to increase in 2024

Investments by datacenter owners and operators, including cloud and hyperscale operators, are expected to increase in 2024, driven mainly by the need to grow the capacity of these environments. However, there will be new challenges for many operators, such as the need to issue regular reports on climate risks, energy efficiency gains and the reduction of carbon emissions, among many others.

A recent report by the Uptime Institute lists the most obvious trends to watch out for in 2024 and identifies some of the most direct implications:

1. Due to new legislation, datacenters in many countries will have to issue regular reports and meet stricter requirements in terms of carbon emissions. Operators will have to prove that their targets are realistic and based on evidence. For many, this could be costly in terms of time and money.

2. The thirsty demand for Artificial Intelligence (AI) is forcing most operators to prepare to secure more power sources and cooling resources. In the Uptime Institute’s view, although the overall impact on datacenters may be profound, the most demanding services will only be provided by a few. For most operators, the impacts will be indirect, and the immediate challenge will be to find the best way to combine density and resilience in the same facilities.

3. Datacenter management software must get smarter and make better use of data. However, many operators have been slow to exploit advances in software, connectivity, and sensor technologies that can help optimise and automate the operation of critical infrastructures. According to the Uptime Institute, this is beginning to change, with the adoption of new tools and the intelligent use of data, including through machine learning. It’s worth noting that the market is still evolving and that there are risks arising from complexity, tool selection and implementation.

4. Direct liquid cooling will not solve efficiency challenges, predicts the Uptime Institute. Operators have high expectations for this technology in terms of efficiency and sustainability, but these benefits will be out of reach for many of them. Slow implementation of the technology, limited optimisation and the need for existing systems to work in parallel are expected to limit efficiency gains.

5. Hyperscale campuses are beginning to redraw the map of datacenters. According to the Uptime Institute, the construction of new hyperscale colocation campuses, connected by broadband fibre, should ease the pressure on traditional datacenters and, in the long term, reduce colocation prices.

AI to help with decision-making

Some companies may rely on Artificial Intelligence (AI) to make operational decisions related to datacenter resilience and energy efficiency throughout 2024. However, according to data from the Uptime Institute survey, confidence in AI for this type of operational decision has fallen over the past year. This is probably due to some unpredictable and inaccurate results from large language models.

“Datacenter owners and operators are beginning to understand the potential benefits of AI in managing these environments. As long as the underlying models are robust, transparent and reliable, AI can be beneficial and increasingly used in areas such as predictive maintenance, anomaly detection, physical security and alert prioritisation,” says John O’Brien, senior analyst at the Uptime Institute, on the research firm’s blog.

Sustainability

The Uptime Institute also predicts a challenging period for the datacenter sector between 2024 and 2030, given the need to meet sustainability targets and reporting requirements.

There are already signs that supervisory bodies are becoming more rigorous in assessing the sustainability of datacenters. In August 2023, for example, the UN-backed Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) removed Amazon’s operations, including Amazon Web Services, along with 120 other organisations, from its list of companies committed to sustainability for failing to meet their carbon emissions commitments.