UK firms tap partners as AI drives data centre strain
More than half of UK organisations are turning to external partners as they grapple with rising data centre power costs, increasing rack density driven by AI workloads and growing resilience requirements, according to research commissioned by colocation provider Asanti.
A survey of 100 senior UK IT decision-makers found 54% already use third parties for cybersecurity services. It also highlighted demand for support with infrastructure audits, disaster recovery planning and decisions about where workloads should run.
Energy pressures are a central issue, with 52% citing rising power costs as their top concern in current data centre environments. Maintaining uptime ranked second at 48%.
AI is also shaping near-term strategy. Nearly half of respondents (48%) said AI adoption will have a large influence on their IT infrastructure strategy over the next three years, ahead of regulatory change and hybrid or multi-cloud considerations.
The research also points to a shift in hardware footprints. IT leaders reported average rack densities of 8kW per rack today and expect that to rise to 11kW within 12 months. Higher-density computing increases power and cooling demands.
Asanti CEO Stewart Laing linked these shifts to broader AI adoption.
"AI has moved from pilot projects to production workloads and with it comes a step-change in rack density, power demand and cooling requirements. Organisations are realising they need the right mix of facilities, partners and architectures to deliver compute and storage requirements without compromising on resilience, sovereignty or cost control."
Resilience focus
Over the next 12 months, cybersecurity and resilience are the most common focus for infrastructure investment, selected by 51% of IT leaders.
Respondents also described practical responses to recent disruptions. Following cyberattacks and service outages in 2025, 60% said they are strengthening security controls. Half reported creating backup strategies across multiple data centre providers or locations, and 42% said they are reviewing business continuity plans.
Workload location is part of that resilience planning. One-third of respondents (33%) plan to move more workloads into on-premise or colocation environments to strengthen resilience.
Location choices
Geography remains a contested part of infrastructure decision-making. The survey found 30% of organisations already use data centres outside the UK, and another 24% plan to. At the same time, 32% said they use only UK-based facilities.
The results point to competing pressures. High UK power costs can make overseas capacity more attractive for some workloads, while regulatory exposure, data protection obligations and latency can push organisations towards UK facilities for other systems and datasets.
Laing said organisations increasingly need to balance these factors.
"For MSPs and infrastructure partners, the opportunity is to help customers design architectures that balance the needs of today, sovereignty, compliance and resilience with AI ambition. That increasingly means hybrid strategies that combine UK-based colocation for critical workloads with selective use of overseas capacity and public cloud where it makes sense."
MSP demand
The research suggests a sustained role for managed service providers, systems integrators and specialist infrastructure partners. Beyond cybersecurity, 35% of respondents said they use external support for infrastructure audits, and the same proportion for end-to-end solution deployment. Around a third (33%) cited disaster recovery and business continuity planning.
Respondents also signalled areas where reliance on partners may increase. Over the next 12 months, 32% expect to increase their use of external support for public cloud repatriation, while 31% expect to increase support for technical scoping for new projects.
Overall, the figures suggest a more deliberate approach to workload placement, with organisations reviewing the economics and risk profiles of different environments. They also point to continued efforts to right-size infrastructure as power costs and density trends change the operating assumptions of data centre deployments.
Asanti commissioned Vanson Bourne to carry out the survey in December 2025. The study focused on IT infrastructure strategy and hosting environment decisions, including resilience considerations, geographic location and rack density expectations.
Laing added:
"As power, AI and sovereignty concerns collide, few organisations can carry all the skills they need in-house. MSPs, systems integrators and specialist data centre providers have a critical role in helping enterprises architect for higher densities, navigate cross-border data complexity and build resilient multi-site infrastructure that can withstand disruption."