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Datacenter infrastructure is evolving to prioritize sustainability, efficiency and reliability, with operators exploring new technologies and energy solutions to support diverse, hybrid IT workloads. In a recent survey conducted by S&P Global Market Intelligence 451 Research, we seek to understand the key dynamics driving the datacenter market.
The survey, which was conducted from May 9, 2025, through June 25, 2025, with a panel of 1,100 IT decision-makers, focused on companies’ views of datacenter infrastructure status, trends, and moves, with a particular focus on UPS, electrical power distribution, and storage.
The Take
Datacenter infrastructure, which includes power, cooling and rack systems, plays a key role in sustainably supporting and protecting the regular operation of core IT gears of computing, storage and networking with the highest availability and reliability. Datacenter operators strive to pick the right technology and architecture to address ever-evolving workloads, improve efficiency, reliability and sustainability, and reduce costs. The hybrid nature of IT infrastructure will continue. While lithium-ion batteries maintain momentum as alternatives or supplements to diesel generators, various energy storage options are being consistently explored. Distributed redundancy continues to be the most popular UPS system architecture for redundancy.
Summary of findings
The hybrid nature of IT infrastructure remains stable. Today, the most popular workload venue by a good margin is broadly cloud (infrastructure, software and platform as a service, and hosted private), with 79% (72% in 2024) of participants reporting that their organization leverages the services. Many of those same organizations also own and operate server rooms or server closets (48%, 44% in 2024) as well as datacenters (40%, 38% in 2024), while a smaller segment (19%, 14% in 2024) leases space at colocation providers and another smaller segment (14%, 25% in 2024) own facilities but contract the operation to a facilities management provider. The overall distribution of different options has been relatively stable, with the last two reversed compared with 2024.
Datacenter power usage effectiveness (PUE) improvement has a long way to go, with only 19% of respondents saying the PUE of their datacenters is below 1.5. Nearly 23% of respondents don’t track their datacenters’ PUE. The centralized distribution of PUE values ranges from 1.41 to 1.9, with 12% of respondents reporting values between 1.51 and 1.6, 11% between 1.71 and 1.8, another 11% between 1.81 and 1.9, 10% between 1.41 and 1.5, and 7% between 1.61 and 1.7.
Lithium-ion battery adoption continues its momentum, with respondents considering lithium-ion batteries as alternatives or supplements to diesel generators, maintaining a high level of 84% (87% in 2024). Only 15% (13% in 2024) of survey respondents will continue using diesel generators without immediate plans to switch or deploy lithium-ion battery banks. In comparison, 31% (29% in 2024) would use diesel generators while ensuring that newer backup system deployments use lithium-ion battery banks. Sixteen percent (13% in 2024) of respondents plan to switch from diesel generators to lithium-ion battery banks on new deployments in the next 12 months, with an additional 9% (13% in 2024) planning to do so in 2-4 years and 9% (10% in 2024) in 5 years, while 20% (20% in 2024) of the survey respondents say that they implement only lithium-ion battery banks in all of their datacenter energy backup systems.
Approximately 72% of respondents are exploring energy storage options beyond lithium-ion batteries, highlighting various innovative energy solutions pursued by organizations committed to sustainability. More than a third (39%) of respondents are exploring hydrogen fuel cells. Additionally, 26% are investigating thermal energy storage. Moreover, 25% have experimented with nickel-zinc batteries, while 22% are looking into biofuels as a renewable energy source. Lastly, 21% have tried pumped hydro storage.
Medium-sized UPS systems (200-500 kVA and 500-1,000 kVA) dominate installations. More than half (51%, 48% in 2024) of survey respondents say their UPS systems are in the 200-500 kVA range, while 33% (29% in 2023) state that their UPS systems are in the 500-1,000 kVA range. One-fifth (21%) of survey respondents report using 100-200 kVA UPS systems, a significant increase compared with 2024 (11%). Twelve percent (14% in 2024) say their UPS systems are above 1,000 kVA, while 10% have 100 kVA (11% in 2024).
Distributed redundancy remains the most popular UPS system architecture for redundancy. Nearly a quarter (24%, 28% in 2024) have distributed redundancy UPS architecture, while the proportions choosing 2(N+1) redundancy, 2N redundancy, N+1 redundancy, and isolated redundancy are 18% (15% in 2024), 18%(15% in 2024), 17% (13% in 2024), and 13% (19% in 2024), respectively. Just 14% of respondents (12% in 2024) have no redundancy.
Outlet-level power metering in rack power distribution unit (rPDU) is getting popular. Nearly half of survey participants (48%) indicate installing power usage metering at the PDU or remote power panel input, while 47% do so at the UPS input. Additionally, 32% of respondents have metering installed at the rPDU input, and 29% have it at the outlet level.
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