Research & exploration

Event Highlights

This year’s event delved into the rapidly evolving landscape of the data centre sector, highlighting how technology advancements are reshaping the industry. Attendees explored critical issues impacting the sector, including:

• Sustainability Pressures: Strategies for integrating eco-friendly practices without compromising performance.
• Skills Shortages: Innovative approaches to attract and retain talent in a competitive market.
• Supply Chain Complexities: Navigating global supply challenges to ensure operational continuity.

The unveiling of our 2024 survey results provided a comprehensive overview of industry trends, reaffirming that balancing speed, substance, and sustainability remains a central theme for data centres moving forward.

Key Discussions

Participants had the opportunity to hear from industry leaders who shared their approaches to:

• Adapting to New Regulations: Ensuring compliance while maintaining operational efficiency.
• Managing Rising Costs: Implementing cost-effective solutions without sacrificing quality.
• Integrating Sustainable Practices: Moving towards greener data centre operations to meet environmental goals.

Download The Full Report

Gain comprehensive insights from the State of the Industry 2024 Event by downloading our detailed report. Whether you’re addressing project delivery challenges, sustainability goals, or the ongoing skills shortage, our report offers invaluable perspectives from over 250 industry professionals.

Now in it’s sixth year, Keysource’s State of the Industry Report 2023, focuses on the data centre trilemma: balancing speed, substance and sustainability. It’s packed with insights from over 250 data centre professionals, and it’s essential information for anyone involved in our industry.

The report highlights the trilemma the industry is facing in dealing with the competing and compelling challenges of developing and delivering on sustainability targets; the pressure to speed up project delivery to remain competitive; and the continuing supply chain and skills issues. This is against a background of rising costs and new EU and imminent UK Regulation changes.

The report shows that the skills shortage continues with competing demand both ‘client side’ and within the supply chain for the same people. This is reflected by the fact that only a third of respondents are confident in the quality of the information that is being provided which negatively impacts the ability to make informed decisions. As a result, nearly half of respondents chose to sub-contract more projects or services than they had planned, as the industry turns even more to supply chain partners to keep to programme timescales. According to the majority of respondents this approach had a positive impact including better quality and quicker delivery, with the inevitable trade off of a higher cost.

There are some encouraging findings around sustainability with 69% of respondents having a seat at the table when discussing sustainability targets and over half having a separate ‘green budget’ that can be used for sustainable solutions and initiatives. However, this positive progress is at odds with the just 17% who consider sustainability to be a high priority and the fact that less than a third said they were making significant progress with their sustainability strategy – with over half still not having one at all! In addition, 64% of respondents haven’t evaluated the carbon impact of existing data centre services and solutions and 57% aren’t intending to evaluate future investments, meaning missed opportunities to make both carbon and financial savings.