Name: Five Data Center Predictions for 2026
Start: 2026-01-14T17:00:00Z
End: 2026-01-14T17:01:00.000Z
Location: BrightTALK

 Uptime Institute is the Global Digital Infrastructure Authority, helping thousands of companies to optimize critical IT assets while managing costs, resources, and efficiency. Uptime’s Tier Standard is the IT industry’s most trusted and adopted global standard for the design, construction, and operation of data centers – the backbone of the digital economy. With its Tier Standard and Certifications, Management & Operations reviews, SCIRA-FSI financial sector risk assessment, broad range of additional risk and performance assessments, Intelligence research services, and accredited training courses completed by over 90,000 data center professionals, Uptime is a trusted IT infrastructure partner for the world's leading enterprise companies.  

Uptime Institute is headquartered in New York, NY, with offices in London, Sao Paulo, Dubai, Riyadh, Singapore, and Taipei. For more information, please visit www.uptimeinstitute.com. 

AI workloads are driving a fundamental shift in data center design and operations. Higher power densities, new cooling paradigms (direct liquid cooling and immersion), more aggressive serviceability requirements, and a rapidly evolving vendor and skills landscape are forcing enterprises and colocation operators to adapt. This webinar dissects real operational challenges that Uptime Institute technical consultants have observed in live AI deployments — including equipment film/contamination issues, workforce skill gaps, vendor availability and lead times, serviceability tradeoffs, and fluid/water quality and filtration requirements — and provides practical mitigations, operational playbooks, and policy recommendations.

AI Q&A: Lessons from the Field – Real-World AI Infrastructure & Operations Challenges

As of today, over 1,600 data centers have achieved Tier Certification of Design Documents - yet every design package contains design elements that will critically reduce the ability to effectively operate the facility, increasing the risk to availability.  This presentation explores some of these critical elements—such as space to allow for ease of maintenance, properly sized coordinators/doors/elevators, smoke, and leak detection —that are frequently underestimated or engineered out to meet competing priorities. We’ll discuss how nuanced choices around physical layout, maintenance access, scalability provisions, and even labeling standards can profoundly affect operational efficiency, resilience, and the facility’s capacity to adapt to future demands. Join us to learn how focusing on these seemingly minor aspects during the design phase can prevent costly retrofits, reduce downtime, and extend the operational lifetime of your data center.

Critical Decisions in Data Center Design That Shape Long-Term Operational Resiliency

Managing third-party risk effectively is challenging. But what if you could have a real-time understanding of your vendors' cybersecurity posture? In this webinar, we'll show you how to assess vendor cybersecurity capability to:
- Assess risk quickly and continuously.
- Prioritize addressing cyber risks associated with the most critical vendors.
- Strengthen your security posture across the entire supply chain.
- Move beyond manual assessments and learn how to manage risk more effectively and efficiently.

Stop the Guesswork - Identifying and Addressing Third Party Cybersecurity Risks

Data center labels and minimum performance standards are being developed in the EU and are being proposed in other geographies. In this webinar, Uptime Intelligence discusses what these controversial labels will look like, how they will be applied, and what the implications might be.

Data Center Sustainability Labels and Minimum Performance Standards

The Uptime Institute Global Data Center Survey, now in its 15th year, is the most comprehensive and longest-running study of its kind. The findings in this report highlight the practices and experiences of data center owners and operators in the areas of resiliency, sustainability, efficiency, staffing, cloud and artificial intelligence.

Uptime Institute 15th Annual Global Data Center Survey Results

Join us for a discussion on the latest cyberattack trends targeting digital infrastructure. We'll explore common attack vectors against IT, OT, and IoT systems, analyzing the techniques used by malicious actors to compromise systems and disrupt data center operations, including service availability.

Securing Your Data Center: Protecting Against IT, OT, and IoT Cyber Attacks

Data center operations relies on effective data center teams being proactive, informed, and practiced. In this session, we’ll explore how these principles of data center operations can be applied to support, sustain, and enhance the skills of people supporting the infrastructure. Learn how to effectively onboard, promote ongoing development, identify and mitigate skill gaps, and create a culture of continuous learning and operational excellence. Whether you're a leader, technician, engineer, or ops manager, this webinar will equip you with practical strategies to keep your most critical assets—your people—operating at peak performance while enjoying the work they do.

Reliability Engineering: Applying Data Center Operations Principles to Enhance Team Performance

Join us for an exclusive briefing on the Uptime Institute Network — the global community of data center leaders committed to improving operational resilience, efficiency, and strategic planning. 

This 30-minute session will reveal:
- The latest research on risk, resiliency, AI-readiness, staffing trends, and sustainability pressures.
- Member-driven initiatives tackling real-world challenges — from outage prevention to automation.
- A sneak peek at our upcoming agenda, including working groups, executive roundtables, and emerging focus areas.

Whether you’re facing tightening budgets, scaling AI workloads, or just looking for smarter ways to benchmark and improve your operations — this is your chance to see how top-tier operators are staying ahead.

Get the intelligence and peer support you won’t find anywhere else.

Inside the Uptime Network: Exclusive Insights and What's Next for Data Center Leaders

Preventing outages continues to be a central focus for data center owners and operators. While infrastructure design and resiliency frameworks have improved in many cases, the complexity of modern architectures continues to present new risks that operators must actively manage. Uptime Intelligence’s Annual Outage Analysis 2025 report analyzes recent data on the causes, frequencies and consequences of IT and data center outages.

Annual Data Center Outage Analysis 2025

European cybersecurity regulations have become effective and will have a major impact on both critical infrastructures and their cybersecurity management. This webinar will discuss the NIS2 Directive, the European Union’s updated cybersecurity framework, which replaced the original NIS Directive and expands the original scope. NIS2 also has a direct influence on data centers and DORA, which has been mandatory since the beginning of 2025, and is specific for financial sector entities and their suppliers, CRA (Cybersecurity Resilience Act) and the European regulation on cybersecurity of critical infrastructures.

This discussion will address the impact of these regulations on existing and future digital infrastructures, and how to address both the required compliance and its use as an improvement opportunity.

European Cybersecurity Regulation and its Impact on Digital Infrastructures

The data center industry has struggled to design and implement a meaningful measurement of deployed and utilized server work capacity and storage product terabyte capacity. Recent publications by The Green Grid and Uptime Institute offer the tools needed to calculate these values. These methodologies can be used to report the EED-mandated ICT capacity values. Globally, operators can combine them with utilization and energy data to experiment with the work delivered per megawatt hour of energy consumed metrics needed to report data center energy performance. This webinar will introduce a methodology to calculate a server work capacity for both standard CPU and GPU based servers and storage capacity for storage products. The discussion will address using these calculated work capacities to satisfy EU Energy Efficiency Directive ICT indicator reporting requirements and a work per energy metric for both server and storage products.

Calculating data center work capacity: the EED and beyond

In today’s quickly evolving market, staying up to date on industry developments can be challenging. Join us for a deep dive on how transforming your operations can make your organization more resilient to evolving technologies, staffing, and regulation. In addition to review of best practices, Ryan Orr, Global Head of Delivery for Uptime Institute will share examples of how operators are addressing the introduction of new technologies and practices to avoid threats to their facilities.

From evolving technologies to staffing, advancements in operations can drive peak data center performance

Rapidly increasing electricity demand requires new generation capacity to power new data centers. What are some of the new, innovative power generation technology and procurement options being developed to meet capacity growth and what are their potential benefits and risks to data center operators?

Strategies for powering data centers with carbon free power

Uptime Intelligence surveys the data center industry landscape to look deeper at what can actually happen in 2025 and beyond based on the latest trends and developments. The stronghold that AI has on the industry is a constant discussion - but how can operators handle the power, weight, and cost around it all? Plus, how will the sprint to build more data centers come to fruition? Join us for an exciting webinar that will cover Uptime Intelligence's team's top issues in its 2025 Outlook.

Five data center predictions for 2025

As the industry power demand grows, IT operators must focus on both IT infrastructure power demand and supply. A portion of the required power growth can be eliminated through better utilization of existing and new IT infrastructure and software that values performance and efficient use of IT infrastructure.

IT Consolidation: A critical data center sustainability initiative

To support reliable, secure, and effective data center operations, state-of-the-art design/construction must be seamlessly integrated with operational excellence.  A well-located, purpose-built facility, designed and built to include reliable, efficient, and high-performance infrastructure provides the foundation for a fully functional data center, while a top-tier data center operations program facilitates its optimal utilization. This holistic approach maximizes the potential of advanced equipment and technologies but also mitigates risks, minimizes downtime, manages change, and enhances overall resilience. The synergy that occurs when you prioritize highly evolved infrastructure and fully optimized operations is a critical factor in supporting a growing, yet increasingly competitive industry.

The Importance of Prioritizing Operational Resiliency & Highly Evolved Data Center Infrastructure

The acceleration of data center energy consumption growth projections appears to threaten sustainability objectives. Instead, it demands a reinvigoration of efforts to improve the energy efficiency of the IT infrastructure through better system management and efficient software combined with satisfying 80-90% of energy consumption with carbon-free energy.

Does Data Center Growth Have to Come at the Cost of Sustainability?

In this webinar and report, Uptime Intelligence looks beyond the more obvious trends of 2026 and examines some of the latest developments and challenges shaping the industry. AI is transforming data center strategies, but its impact remains uneven due to unclear demand, complex infrastructure needs, and long development timelines. In 2026, growth in AI workloads will continue to be driven by a small number of large organizations with the resources to deploy high-density systems. Challenges in securing power, managing advanced cooling requirements and capital project delays will persist or intensify. At the same time, AI automation tools will move from pilot projects to operations, delivering measurable efficiency gains. As new AI applications begin to show real business value, data center operators will need targeted investments and to plan carefully to keep pace.

Five Data Center Predictions for 2026

Artificial Intelligence

Energy Efficiency

Data Center

Resiliency

Data Center Efficiency

Risk Management

Risk Assessment

Data Center Management

Operational Efficiency

Operational Performance

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Cloud Computing

The IT security community on BrightTALK is composed of more than 200,000 IT security professionals trading relevant information on software assurance, network security and mobile security. Join the conversation by watching on-demand and live information security webinars and asking questions of experts and industry leaders.

IT Security

Increasing expectations for good governance, effective risk management and complex demands for corporate compliance are presenting a growing challenge for organizations of all sizes. Join industry thought leaders as they provide you with practical advice on how to implement successful risk and compliance management strategies across your organization. Browse risk management resources in the form of interactive webinars and videos and ask questions of expert GRC professionals.

IT Governance, Risk and Compliance

The data center management community focuses on the holistic management and optimization of the data center. From technologies such as virtualization and cloud computing to data center design, colocation, energy efficiency and monitoring, the BrightTALK data center management community provides the most up-to-date and engaging content from industry experts to better your infrastructure and operations. Engage with a community of your peers and industry experts by asking questions, rating presentations and participating in polls during webinars, all while you gain insight that will help you transform your infrastructure into a next generation data center.

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Business Continuity / Disaster Recovery

As an IT professional, many of the problems you face are multifaceted, complex and don’t lend themselves to simple solutions. The information technology community features useful and free information technology resources. Join to browse thousands of videos and webinars on ITIL best practices, IT security strategy and more presented by leading CTOs, CIOs and other technology experts.

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Internal audit and compliance professionals are facing increasingly stringent regulatory requirements when it comes to compliance reporting and internal control procedures. Join the audit and compliance community to learn best practices from thought leaders on topics such as regulatory compliance, internal audit checklists and audit program strategies.

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Procurement and Sourcing

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Five Data Center Predictions for 2026

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Uptime Institute