OFF-PREM
Survey finds more workloads run off-site than at in-house corporate facilities for the first time
IT is going remote while sucking up more power. Most corporate IT is now off-premises for the first time, according to Uptime Institute, while the average rack power density has crested above 11 kW for the first time as server fleets are gradually replaced with more powerful hardware.Uptime’s Global Data Center Survey 2026 reveals how the industry is managing to adapt to challenging circumstances, with the usual evergreen concerns over rising costs plus staffing and skills shortages. The survey polls more than 800 datacenter owners and operators across multiple countries, with more than half (52 percent) in North America and Europe.
Off premise dominates: Every year, Uptime asks its enterprise respondents to estimate what percentage of their IT workloads are run in-house versus in third-party facilities.
For the first time, third-party sites have the larger share, accounting for 46 percent of IT workloads, compared with 44 percent residing in enterprise-owned corporate server farms.Those figures don’t add up to 100 percent, as some respondents (10 percent) say they are using IT rooms and server cabinets rather than a dedicated facility.Uptime’s experts estimate that, by 2028, the proportion of workloads in self-owned server halls will remain the same, while those running in third-party sites will expand to 48 percent, eating away at those currently based in IT rooms and server cabinets. More power: While the headlines have featured AI infrastructure pushing IT infrastructure power density to 120 kW per rack or even higher, the reality is that most datacenters and servers operate at a much lower level than that.This year, the average of the most typical rack densities now surpasses 11 kW, as a gradual ongoing shift toward higher-powered hardware was compounded by a small number of new high-density facilities with racks above 30 kW.Without those few high-density facilities skewing the average, it sits at 7.8 kW, just slightly up from 7.5 kW in 2025.
