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Data Center News Roundup: Welcome to 2025Data Center News Roundup: Welcome to 2025
In this week's top data center news, a peek into the stories that shaped 2024 and predictions for data centers in 2025 – from security to AI to sustainability.
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With data center news moving faster than ever, we want to make it easy for industry professionals to cut through the noise and find the most important stories of the week.
The Data Center Knowledge News Roundup brings you the latest news and developments across the data center industry – from investments and mergers to security threats and industry trends.
To keep up to date with all things data centers, subscribe to the Data Center Knowledge newsletter to get content straight to your inbox.
Looking Back: 2024 in Review
Before we jump into news from the new year, let’s take a stroll down memory lane – from supply chain bottlenecks to data centers in unusual places to an AI data center boom.
Over the past several weeks, we broke down 2024’s most-read stories in data center construction, power and cooling, security, AI, sustainability, and cloud computing:
2024’s Biggest Data Center Construction Stories: A Year in Review: 2024’s most-read data center construction stories highlight major global investments, sustainable building innovations, AI-driven hyperscale demand, creative solutions to land shortages, and financing strategies for new builds. Read the full list of top data center construction stories.
Top 10 Data Center Power and Cooling Stories of 2024: Data Center Knowledge’s top ten data center power and cooling stories of 2024 brought experts together in conversation about critical findings in energy usage, ways to leverage AI in efforts to make data center operations more sustainable, methods for building more efficient cooling systems, and how data centers and utility companies must come together to address these pressing energy concerns. Read the full list of top data center power and cooling stories.
Top 10 Data Center Security Stories of 2024: Defying expectations, traditional cybersecurity news accounted for only a small portion of our top 2024 data center security stories. Rather, other security-related considerations – from putting out literal fires inside data centers to handling the unique security challenges of edge data centers – defined how we talk about security in the data center.
The Biggest AI Data Center Stories That Shaped 2024: As-yet-unproven projections and predictions about AI’s impact on the data center industry continued to abound in 2024. Last year, our top AI stories focused on both the visions and the limitations of this novel technology – from surging capex to edge AI architectures.
Top 10 Data Center Sustainability Stories of 2024: As environmentalists called for greater transparency around data center energy use and operators looked for more efficient methods for managing AI workloads, sustainability trends over the past year focused on innovative efforts to reduce data center energy waste. Read the full list of top data center sustainability stories.
Top 10 Cloud Data Center Stories of 2024: 2024’s top cloud computing stories focused on the history of the cloud space, including outages at major public cloud platforms and the origins of the grammatically problematic “on-premise,” alongside emerging trends, including the impact of VMware’s acquisition by Broadcom, cloud sustainability initiatives, and the convergence between AI and the cloud.
Looking Forward: 2025 Predictions
But ‘looking back’ can tell only part of the complex and ever-changing data center story.
As 2024 came to a close, technology analyst and regular Data Center Knowledge contributor Christopher Tozzi shared predictions for the trends that will have the greatest impact on data centers in 2025.
Data Center Cooling: Trends and Strategies to Watch in 2025: Data center cooling trends for 2025, writes Tozzi, include liquid cooling, heat reuse, and analytics to tackle rising temperatures and sustainability challenges as businesses look for more cost-effective ways to cool their facilities.
7 Key Data Center Security Trends to Watch in 2025. Hybrid cloud, chip-level controls, and updated monitoring systems are all likely to redefine data center security.
5 Cloud Computing Trends that Will Impact Data Centers in 2025. Christopher Tozzi explores five cloud computing trends set to shape data centers in 2025 – from AI’s energy impact to the rise of quantum services. “As compliance mandates intensify,” he writes, “so will the pressure that data center operators face to make security protections as strong as possible.”
Top Data Center Sustainability Trends to Watch in 2025. Will data center sustainability continue to be a hot topic in 2025? Definitely. Predictions include the adoption of public cloud as a sustainability measure, more transparent reporting, and an increased focus on water usage.
New Data Center Developments
Finally, this wouldn’t be a Data Center Knowledge news roundup without a rundown of the most important data center developments of the past week. Even during the holiday season, new data centers were constructed and announced.
On December 23, Equinix announced plans to acquire BT Group's Irish data center business, including data centers in CityWest and Ballycoolin, Dublin, for €59 million. Equinix currently operates six data centers in the Dublin area.
On December 27, Bit Digital acquired a site for a 5 MW Tier-3 data center expansion project in Montreal, Canada. The New York-based HPC infrastructure company paid CAD $33.5 million for the 160,000 sq ft MTL2 site and expects to spend an additional CAD $27.6 million to complete a retrofit by May 2025.
On New Years Eve, Atlas Development LLC proposed a $17 billion 13-building data center campus in Coweta County, 45 miles south of Atlanta, Georgia. As reported by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, each building of the so-called ‘Project Sail’ campus will span 378,000 sq ft – a total footprint of 4.9 million sq ft across 832 acres of land.
Elsewhere, St. Louis-based World Wide Technology (WWT) announced plans to acquire Canadian IT services provider Softchoice for $1.25 billion.
“Softchoice has been a transformative player in the IT industry for over 35 years, and adding its complementary software, cloud, cybersecurity, and AI capabilities to WWT’s portfolio will enable us to create even greater value for our clients striving to achieve their digital transformation goals,” said WWT co-founder and CEO Jim Kavanaugh.
Other Great Reads in DCK This Week
Energy-Hungry AI Firms Bet on These Moonshot Technologies. The immense electricity needs of data centers have alarmed the power sector. These technologies promise huge amounts of new energy – at a steep cost.
Utilities Embrace AI for More Integrated Operations: Cisco Study. Utilities are leveraging AI to enhance operational technology and drive efficiency, a new report reveals.
Robotic Collaboration Launched for Maintenance in Chip Production. The number of positions in the semiconductor industry outpaces the current pool of skilled engineers.
Google’s Willow Chip: Quantum Leap or Quantum Hype? Google’s Willow chip achieves a major milestone in quantum error correction – but how close are we to practical quantum computing?
In the Shadows of Arizona’s Data Center Boom, Thousands Live Without Power. As data centers drain America’s power grids, a fierce battle is being waged for electricity. On Navajo Nation land, many are on the losing end.
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