Thought Leadership White Paper
2023 data center progress report: digital transformation and the energy transition Introduction
Digital transformation: data center sector dynamics
Commercial data centers are one of the most digitallyadvanced of all sectors, given that new IT technologies are literally their stock in trade. That doesn’t necessarily make the job of digitizing their own operations any easier. They sometimes lack the digital tools needed for timely, actionable insights into critical operational and sustainability metrics. They’re also often overwhelmed with too much data—unclear about which insights truly matter and uncertain how best to report them to meet industry and regulatory requirements. To make things even more challenging, the sector continues to face digital staffing and skills challenges even as the number, capacity and type of data centers needed to power the planet’s digital economy continues to grow exponentially.
Compared to many sectors, commercial data centers are universally engaged in digitalization. None of the survey’s 152 commercial data center respondents indicated they weren’t at least planning, if not already executing, digital transformation strategies. Adoption of digital tools and technologies is, if anything, even more prevalent (see Figure 1).
Those are among the major takeaways from a survey commissioned by Eaton and 451 Research of 152 commercial data center owners and operators on their organization’s digital transformation efforts in eight countries across the United States (U.S.), Europe and United Arab Emirates (see Methodology).
Figure 1: Data center digitalization is strong, with most already in the game 1 and 2 Digital transformation strategy status1
Execution 54%
Consideration 46%
Digital technology adoption status2
Broad adoption 61%
Some adoption 39%