Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

Outages are less common than they once were, but when they happen, the impact is severe. According to the Uptime Institute Global Data Center Survey 2025, half of data center operators reported at least one impactful outage in the past three years, and one in ten of those caused a serious or severe disruption. The financial risk is just as significant. 20% of operators said their most recent outage cost more than $1 million when accounting for downtime, recovery, and reputational damage.

Data center vacancy rates in North America have hit record lows, with reports from CBRE and JLL indicating figures between 1.6% and 2.3% as of mid-2025. This is driven by exceptionally high demand from hyperscale and AI users, which is outstripping supply and leading to significant competition for space and power. The tight market is expected to continue through at least 2027, with preleasing of new construction at high levels.

A Building Management System (BMS) is commonly used in data centers to monitor and control the facility’s mechanical, electrical, and environmental systems. With a BMS in place, it’s reasonable to ask: do you still need Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) software? The short answer is yes—DCIM and BMS serve occasionally overlapping but fundamentally different purposes.