Uptime Institute’s 2026 survey indicates that corporate IT has shifted off premises for the first time, with more workloads now hosted in third-party facilities than in company-owned data centres. The change highlights organisations’ growing reliance on external providers, even as they face higher costs, skills shortages and increasing electricity demands.

Third-party sites host 46% of workloads, compared with 44% in enterprise-owned server farms; the remaining 10% run in IT rooms or cabinets. Typical rack density has exceeded 11 kW, although this falls to 7.8 kW when a small number of very high-density sites are excluded; 24% of respondents now operate some racks at 30 kW or more, up from 19% in 2025. The survey covered more than 800 data-centre owners and operators, and forecasts third-party workloads reaching 48% by 2028.