Experts in action: 3 challenges facing data centers today

Artificial intelligence is reshaping the digital economy, and data centers are feeling the pressure. Goldman Sachs Research projects AI will drive a 165% increase in data center power demand by 2030. The International Energy Agency reports that global data center electricity use jumped roughly 73% in a single year.

The demand AI places on data centers isn’t new. But it does exacerbate some of the key challenges the industry is already facing. ABM’s Brad Tolbert, SVP of Sales, Technical Solutions, talks about how the data center operators today are thinking differently about how to better position their facilities for the future.

1. Labor shortages

More than half of data center operators struggle to find qualified staff. Open positions for electrical engineers and mechanical technicians can sit for 60 or more days. In the past, data centers would rely on local, specialized vendors. But the labor shortage has led operators to lean on onsite, embedded, full-time technicians.

Furthermore, Tolbert notes, operators are now managing infrastructure spread across the country rather than concentrated in a single region. As data centers expand into markets that historically haven't supported them, operators face a new challenge: finding national partners who can service those locations.

The data centers navigating these challenges successfully work with national-level partners that build a standardized program around their maintenance and technical needs, instead of stitching together one-off vendor relationships that don't scale. When you can create a national solution and replicate it across every site, the whole operation gets simpler and more repeatable.

2. Power availability, reliability, and cost

Power availability, not capital, has become the primary constraint on development in the data center sector. Grid interconnections can take up to four years, and in some regions, utilities are quoting wait times of two to seven years. A facility can be fully built and still sit idle, waiting for the grid to catch up.

Not only do data centers have to worry about available power, but also about rising energy costs. Electricity is among the top operating expenses for any data center, and peak demand charges make it worse. Peak energy demand charges routinely account for 30% to 70% of total electricity costs for data centers, depending on their utility territory and rate structure.

Tolbert says this is why bridge power has moved from a niche option to a strategic necessity. Bridge solutions, like backup generators, microgrids, and battery systems offer a reliable, affordable source of power that help data centers stay operational no matter where they’re located.

3. Complexity

As operators scale across more sites, the web of vendors managing power, cooling, maintenance, and monitoring grows with them, and accountability blurs. When something fails, no single partner owns the outcome. This fragmentation can lead to outages. When a data center suffered three critical events in a single quarter, it all traced back to a patchwork of separate vendors for backup power and battery maintenance.

The integrated facility services model consolidates operations, maintenance, and technical functions under a single point of accountability. Rather than coordinating a dozen specialized vendors, data center operators get one partner managing mechanical and electrical systems together, self-performing the work to keep quality consistent across every site.

The integrated approach extends asset life, reduces unplanned spend, and lowers operating costs, while giving operators the consistency to scale with confidence.

The common thread is clear. Growth in this market isn't won by reacting to constraints as they arrive. It's won by planning around power, people, and partnership before they become bottlenecks. The operators thinking this way today are the ones who will be ready for what comes next.

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