The critical digital infrastructure sector continues to expand and attract enviable levels of new investment. The coming year (and beyond) promises opportunities but also challenges that only some data centers will be likely to navigate successfully. This report predicts some of the potential outcomes ahead, including achieving zero-carbon emissions, reducing dependency on cloud, benefiting from processor innovation and ensuring supply-chain resiliency.

Introduction

For the digital infrastructure industry, 2021 was an unexpectedly positive year, given the mood over the previous 12 months. When the pandemic struck, in early 2020, the global business outlook was very unsettled, with many data center and IT managers fearing major staffing issues, supply chain problems, budget stresses and a severe recession. It was not clear at this stage that effective vaccines against COVID-19 would be developed or that economies would recover so fast, or even that major political upheaval would be avoided.