The IT landscape is changing at a breathtaking pace and hybrid IT is increasingly where UK organisations are ending up. The UK Business Data Survey 2026, published in June, found that businesses handling digitised data split their storage across on premise (27%), public cloud (31%) and private cloud (19%), with 29% relying entirely on external data centres.
The evolving role of data centres in modern hybrid IT environments
Posted on in Blog
It’s all change…
What has actually changed
AI workloads joining the party
According to figures from the Environmental Audit Committee, AI adoption among UK organisations went from 52% to 64% between 2025 and 2026, which is roughly ten points above the EU average. These workloads must sit somewhere with the power, the cooling and the connectivity to carry them.
Power is the constraint
According to Savills, proposed UK data centre projects have collectively requested around 50GW of grid capacity, which is more than the country’s peak electricity demand, so it is not possible for all of them to proceed. The practical consequence is that capacity in the established clusters is largely spoken for, and new development is moving out to places where power can actually be delivered.
Colocation as the central point of hybrid IT
Colocation provides the connectivity to public and private cloud platforms, the security and compliance controls for workloads, and the scalability an on premise facility cannot provide without a huge capital project and clamouring to access sufficient power.
As such, colocation is now the fastest-growing destination for workloads coming back from public cloud (S&S Insider, 2026). This repatriation is driven largely by unpredictable cloud bills, by data sovereignty requirements, and by the difficulties of governing a data estate without knowing its actual physical location. As part of this repatriation process, many organisations are realising that renting fully equipped data centre space is significantly easier than maintaining an on premise facility.
What this means for IT leaders
With so many variables to take into account, and with so much changing over time, it’s clearer than ever that it’s not a case of picking one environment over another but, instead, placing each workload where it makes sense. Steady-state systems with predictable demand often run more cost effectively in a colocation facility than in public cloud, and data with residency requirements, or latency-critical systems, need a physical location you control.
Proving compliance
The Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 came into force in June 2025 and was phased in through to June 2026, when the remaining data protection provisions took effect. It amends rather than replaces UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018, and much of it gives organisations more room to operate.
For most organisations, the most important thing is knowing where regulated data physically sits, who can access the building, and what evidence you can produce to back up your claims. That information is far easier to provide when your business-critical IT and workloads are hosted by a data centre whose job it is to be able to evidence where data resides and how it is managed.
The way we work with clients
Complexity is the reason most companies cannot do this alone – a mid-sized business running a hybrid estate needs competence in cloud architecture, network design, security operations, power and cooling, and capacity planning, which is a significant skillset requirement for a potentially small team.
Providing the physical platform
All digital transformation projects require a secure, accessible, well-connected data centre with redundant power, resilient cooling and 24/7 maintenance – a big ask of on premise facilities for smaller organisations.
An ongoing partnership
Our clients depend on us to help them work out what comes next. That may mean designing a hybrid architecture that spans our facility, one or more public clouds and a software-defined network over the top, bringing in our network of managed services, cloud, hosting, security and connectivity partners as each piece is needed.
What next?
Whilst power continues to be a constraint, organisations that secure data centre capacity early, with a data centre operator who understands hybrid estates, will have an easier time than those who leave it late.
If you are reviewing your data centre strategy, we would be happy to talk it through with you. Get in touch to discuss your requirements.