Uptime, Security, Connectivity and Performance Overtake Cost as Primary Drivers of Enterprise IT Decisions Across Cloud, Colocation and On-Prem Environments
DENVER, July 08, 2026--(BUSINESS WIRE)--CoreSite, an American Tower company (NYSE: AMT) empowering critical business and AI workloads that impact everyday life through interconnected data center solutions, today released its 2026 State of the Data Center Report, which examines how enterprise IT strategies are evolving as organizations enter a new phase of hybrid infrastructure management.
The seventh edition of the report shows that hybrid IT has become the standard operating model for enterprises – but that companies are still looking for the right hybrid IT mix. After years of cloud migration and hybrid adoption, organizations are shifting their focus from deciding whether to use cloud, colocation or on-premises infrastructure to determining which workloads belong in each environment.
As workloads become more distributed and AI drives greater infrastructure demands, enterprises are taking a more deliberate approach to workload placement, making decisions based on performance, security, data control and connectivity requirements rather than cost alone.
"An organization's success will be determined by its ability to deploy hybrid workloads at scale, and by future-proofing with higher power densities and faster connectivity," said Juan Font, President and CEO of CoreSite and SVP of American Tower. "The future belongs to organizations that align the right infrastructure with the right workloads."
High-level insights and key data points from this year's report include:
Workload Placement Is Becoming More Intentional: Across roughly two dozen workload categories, enterprises are actively rebalancing where applications run. The research shows increased cloud deployment of chatbots, mobile apps, websites, content delivery and AI-based recommender systems, while colocation is gaining share in workloads such as web applications, HR systems and cybersecurity—signaling a more precise, workload-by-workload optimization approach rather than broad migration strategies.
CIOs Are Choosing Colocation for AI Production Workloads: Nearly 70% of CIOs now favor colocation and hybrid environments for AI/ML production workloads such as chatbots, virtual assistants and web hosting. This marks one of the clearest signals yet that AI production infrastructure is migrating to highly connected, power-dense environments.
Cloud Connectivity Is Now a Core Requirement for Colocation Providers: Nearly eight in 10 respondents rate native, direct connectivity to major cloud providers as 'very important' for colocation providers — the highest level of urgency recorded in the last five years, showing that seamless public cloud interconnection has become a foundation for modern hybrid IT architectures.
Cost Is No Longer the Primary Driver: While cost remains a factor, uptime, security and performance have overtaken cost as the primary drivers of workload placement decisions, particularly for AI and high-density compute workloads, marking a shift from cost-optimized infrastructure planning to resilience- and performance-driven architecture decisions.