Soaring energy costs, resilience demands, and relentless AI deployments are forcing UK firms to rethink their data centre strategies, according to new research from Asanti, a shift with clear knock‑on effects for MSPs, cloud providers, and infrastructure partners.

In a survey of 100 senior IT decision makers, nearly half (48%) agreed that the rapid uptake of AI will influence their IT infrastructure strategy over the next three years, ahead of regulatory changes or hybrid cloud capabilities. 

Behind this shift, Asanti found IT leaders currently reporting average rack densities of 8kW per rack, forecast to rise to 11kW within twelve months, as AI-heavy workloads and high-density compute drive up power and cooling requirements.

Power costs are already the biggest concern for existing data centre environments, cited by 52% of firms, ahead of even maintaining uptime (48%), and over the next three years, rising energy costs and sustainability commitments will sit alongside AI, resilience and regulations as the central pillars of infrastructure planning.

“AI has moved from pilot projects to production workloads, and with it comes a step-change in rack density, power demand and cooling requirements,” said Stewart Laing, CEO of Asanti. 

“Organisations are realising they need the right mix of facilities, partners and architectures to deliver compute and storage requirements without compromising on resilience, sovereignty or cost control.”

While power concerns might inform short-term infrastructure investments, security and resilience still sit at the heart of strategic planning.

In response to last year’s wave of cyber-attacks and service disruptions, organisations are strengthening security controls (60%), creating backup strategies across multiple data centre providers and locations (50%), and scrutinising their business continuity planning (42%). 

Asanti found that a third of firms also plan to move more workloads into on-premise or colocation environments to strengthen their IT resilience, especially as location decisions become more polarised in response to demands for tech sovereignty.

The study found an almost even split, however, with 30% of organisations using data centres outside the UK and another 24% planning to do so, while 32% report they use only UK-based data centres. 

Asanti said this suggests a push‑pull between cost and sovereignty, with high UK power costs drawing some workloads overseas, but data protection obligations, regulatory exposure and latency considerations keep others anchored in British facilities.

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There are, however, still plenty of opportunities for MSPs and infrastructure partners in the UK. Asanti found strong demand for external expertise, with more than half of organisations (54%) using third-party providers for security services, while around a third bring in external partners for infrastructure audits, disaster recovery, and business continuity planning.

Looking ahead over the next twelve months, organisations expect to increase their use of external support for public cloud repatriation (32%) and technical scoping for new projects (31%), signalling a shift toward more intentional workload placement and right‑sizing.

“As power, AI and sovereignty concerns collide, few organisations can carry all the skills they need in‑house,” said Laing.

“MSPs, systems integrators and specialist data centre providers have a critical role in helping enterprises architect for higher densities, navigate cross-border data complexity and build resilient multi‑site infrastructure that can withstand disruption.”