Duane Barnes is president of RapidScale, an enterprise managed & professional services provider for public, private and hybrid environments.getty​For years, technology infrastructure planning followed a familiar rhythm. IT leaders could map out refresh cycles, secure budget approval and operate with a reasonable expectation in such a way that costs, availability and timelines would remain relatively stable. That expectation no longer holds. AI demand has made infrastructure procurement far less predictable. Wood Mackenzie reports that lead times for critical data center components are already at 18 to 36 months, with bottlenecks increasing costs and potentially delaying projects. Pricing windows are shrinking, lead times are stretching, hardware orders are taking longer to confirm, and in some cases, prices are changing late in the procurement process. CIOs and other technology leaders may be tempted to wait for the market to settle down before making major decisions, but the market is not going through a temporary disruption. It is structurally changing.Waiting for stabilization is not a strategy. Leaders need to plan around longer timelines, tighter availability and less pricing certainty from the start. Why Infrastructure Is Getting Harder To Buy​​Across the buying process, pricing, availability and timelines are becoming harder to predict. The underlying issue is that demand is rising faster than the market can add supply.Micron has said its entire 2026 high-bandwidth memory chip supply is already sold out, while Gartner forecasts a 130% increase in combined DRAM and SSD prices by the end of the year. Pressures like these are changing how infrastructure is bought. Quotes now expire quickly, and costs can shift before a deal closes. In some cases, previously agreed terms are being revised or withdrawn, making it harder to lock in budgets or move through refresh cycles with confidence. Delivery timelines are stretching, too. Formerly straightforward hardware purchases can now take months or longer. Even when organizations are ready to buy, they may not be able to secure what they need on the timeline they planned for.And because vendors are responding differently to the same constraints, organizations are seeing inconsistent outcomes even under similar market conditions. 3 Ways IT Leaders Can Plan In A Volatile Market​​Traditional models assume a level of stability that no longer exists. That does not make infrastructure planning impossible, but it means the process has to become more adaptive, grounded in current market conditions and tied to business risk.The following priorities may look operational, but they directly shape cost, risk and strategic flexibility. 1. Assess Your Infrastructure Exposure Before You Commit Before making any major decisions, take a full inventory of where you are most vulnerable. Start with current dependencies. What hardware is tied to refresh cycles? What infrastructure is approaching end of life? What upgrades are already scheduled, and what risks come with delaying them? Then overlay your technology road map for the next 18 to 24 months. Where do you expect new demand? Are there product launches, expansions or M&A plans that will increase infrastructure pressure? Are there business initiatives that depend on capacity available at a specific time? Finally, align all of that with business priorities. Infrastructure planning should reflect what the company is trying to achieve, not just what the IT calendar says is due. 2. Make Trade-Offs Intentionally When budgets are tight and supply is uncertain, every decision involves a trade-off. While you can’t avoid those trade-offs, you can make them more intentional. That may mean weighing short-term savings against long-term reliability and performance, deciding whether a refresh can be delayed without creating a larger cost or performance problem later, or prioritizing the workloads that directly support business outcomes instead of trying to solve everything at once. One of the most common mistakes leaders can make in a volatile market is deferring too much for too long. That can create a bigger expense later, especially if aging systems need to be replaced all at once under worse market conditions. Leaders should not wait for perfect conditions before making hard decisions.3. Prioritize Supplier Resilience Over Sticker Price In a volatile market, leaders need to look beyond specs and starting price and ask harder questions about how suppliers manage constraints.Can they still meet commitments when supply is tight? How clear is their communication when timelines shift? Do they provide transparency around pricing changes, or do surprises show up late in the process? Evaluate vendors based on how reliably they meet delivery timelines and communicate changes after the initial quote. If a supplier cannot provide that visibility, leaders need backup options already qualified. Identify secondary providers, test procurement paths in advance, and avoid concentrating critical workloads or hardware plans with a single vendor. You Can’t Wait For Predictability To Return Infrastructure strategy used to be about optimizing around known variables. Today, it is about making sound decisions in the face of uncertainty. Leaders cannot afford to freeze. The best move is to plan with flexibility and visibility, using a model built around current market conditions. The right partners can help evaluate alternatives, pressure-test assumptions and adapt plans. The organizations that navigate this period best will be the ones building resilience now, as delays, cost changes and supply constraints continue to reshape their options.The risk is not just making the wrong infrastructure decision. It is waiting too long and losing the ability to act on your own terms.Forbes Technology Council is an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives. Do I qualify?