Transform Your Data Center Strategy With a Business-Driven Approach

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The role of the data center is evolving. Traditional ownership models are reaching their limits. Rising operational costs, aging facilities, and increasing compliance pressures are making physical data centers unsustainable. At the same time, organizations are rushing to cloud, edge, and colocation — often without a cohesive strategy. Use this research to align IT strategy with business needs, design for resilience, and create a scalable ecosystem that adapts as fast as your organization does.

When it comes to data centers, the competitive edge is no longer in owning infrastructure but in strategically placing workloads. Each workload has unique requirements for performance, security, latency, and compliance. The future of the data center is hybrid, flexible, and designed around organizational value – not square footage.

1. Data center ownership is out, agility is in.

Owning physical data center infrastructure is no longer a competitive advantage for most organizations. The real value lies in how infrastructure drives agility, resilience, and cost optimization. Rethink physical ownership in favor of flexible models such as colocation, cloud, or hybrid.

2. Put workloads where they belong.

A modern data center strategy starts with the workload. Each workload type has unique requirements for latency, compliance, performance, and cost, so placement must be intentional and data driven.

3. Design for automation and flexibility.

Next-generation data centers must be automated, modular, and able to adapt to shifting workloads, power constraints, and sustainability demands. AI and orchestration tools are critical for enabling “lights-out” operations and reducing reliance on manual intervention.

Use this guide to shape your future-ready infrastructure.

This research provides a structured framework to evaluate workloads, compare infrastructure options, and plan execution with security, sustainability, and cost control in mind. Explore how to:

Place agility over ownership: Infrastructure should deliver adaptability, not long-term capital drag.

Make workload-driven decisions: Place workloads intentionally – on-premises, in the cloud, or at the edge – based on business priorities.

Prioritize automation & flexibility: Build for resilience with modular, automated, and AI-assisted operations.

Gain a hybrid advantage: Balance cloud, colocation, and on-prem to optimize cost, control, and performance.

Consider sustainability and compliance: Design with ESG and regulatory requirements as first-class priorities.

Transform Your Data Center Strategy With a Business-Driven Approach Research & Tools

1. Transform Your Data Center Strategy With a Business-Driven Approach Deck – A strategic roadmap to help organizations evaluate current infrastructure, assess modernization options, and execute effectively.

This deck equips you with:

A strategic roadmap. Reframe your data center planning with a structured, business-aligned approach.

A practical workbook. Evaluate readiness, prioritize workloads, and uncover hidden costs like power and cooling.

Decision frameworks. Compare infrastructure models and ensure every placement decision aligns with organizational goals.

2. Data Center Strategy Workbook – A practical, structured, Excel-based assessment tool to evaluate readiness, prioritize workload decisions, and track execution metrics.

Use this workbook to:

Evaluate organizational readiness for a modern data center strategy.

Determine the placement of workloads based on business value and technical requirements.

Uncover hidden costs like power consumption to make informed, cost-effective infrastructure decisions.

About Info-Tech

Info-Tech Research Group is the world’s fastest-growing information technology research and advisory company, proudly serving over 30,000 IT professionals.

We produce unbiased and highly relevant research to help CIOs and IT leaders make strategic, timely, and well-informed decisions. We partner closely with IT teams to provide everything they need, from actionable tools to analyst guidance, ensuring they deliver measurable results for their organizations.

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