Originally posted on Datalec LTD.
In a digital economy where uptime is non-negotiable, effective critical facilities management (FM) is becoming a primary lever for managing outage risk in high‑density, AI‑driven data centres. As infrastructure grows more complex and AI-driven compute places unprecedented strain on power and cooling systems, operators face escalating risks, making the cost of getting FM wrong higher than ever.
Evolving Pressures, Escalating Risks: The New Reality for Data Centre Operators
Despite steady year-on-year improvements in resilience, the industry continues to operate under significant pressure. According to Uptime Institute’s 2025 Outage Analysis, outages are occurring less frequently but are becoming more complex and more expensive when they do happen. Power-related failures remain the leading cause of impactful incidents, accounting for 54% of major outages, while 53% of operators reported at least one outage in the past three years, even as overall rates decline.
This challenge is amplified by the rapid rise of AI and the high-density compute requirements. AI workloads are now “straining existing infrastructure, especially around power and cooling,” creating new categories of risk that simply didn’t exist a decade ago. Staffing shortages across the sector add further pressure, reducing the availability of experienced professionals capable of managing mission-critical environments.
The financial implications are equally significant. More than 54% of organisations reported that their most recent outage exceeded $100,000 in cost, and 20% experienced losses above $1 million. For large enterprises, downtime can reach $540,000 to well over $1 million per hour, depending on sector and workload criticality.
This is the operating landscape that data centre leaders must now navigate, where even small procedural missteps can cascade into business-critical failures.
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