Most organizations are planning infrastructure needs years in advance as capacity, technical, and workforce constraints reshape deployment strategies
DENVER, Sept. 16, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — Flexential, a leading provider of secure and flexible data center solutions, has found that organizations are planning much further ahead for AI-related infrastructure needs than traditional IT requirements. In fact, 79% of enterprises are mapping out data center capacity more than a year in advance, with 62% forecasting one to three years ahead and 17% looking three to five years out. This extended timeline reflects the substantial investments and long procurement cycles that AI workloads demand.
That trend, captured in the 2025 State of AI Infrastructure Report, reflects the mounting pressure IT leaders are under to act early in a tightening market — and they may be underestimating how difficult it will be to secure what they need. Despite rising demand and shrinking supply, 94% of respondents expressed confidence in their planning process. This confidence may be misplaced, especially among the 16% who are looking less than one year ahead, as 70% of them feel well prepared to meet future infrastructure needs.
These findings are based on a survey of more than 350 IT leaders at organizations with more than $100 million in annual revenue, including 100 respondents from companies exceeding $2 billion. Participants were asked about technological readiness, workforce challenges, and the steps their businesses are taking to support AI growth at scale.
“Vacancy rates are tightening, and lead times are extending as AI requirements grow,” said Ryan Mallory, President and COO of Flexential. “What used to be a two-year runway is now the minimum planning horizon to stay competitive. Providers and enterprises must act early and be flexible because waiting for certainty will cost time, capital, and opportunities. Once capacity is unavailable, there are no quick fixes.”
Even when technology is in place, issues persist. As application demands grow and workloads increase, companies are blending private and public solutions to balance cost and performance. Still, 59% of respondents reported bandwidth shortages in the past year, and 53% experienced excessive latency. These issues show that AI’s success depends on the network as much as capacity.
Workforce limitations add another layer of complexity. Only 5% of respondents said they encountered no AI-related skills or staffing gaps in the past year. The most common gap was in managing specialized computing infrastructure (61%), followed by data science or data engineering (53%) and advanced networking technologies (47%).
These technical shortages are compounded by broader talent acquisition challenges. More than half of respondents identified insufficient upskilling or retraining programs (54%) or finding qualified candidates with advanced AI experience (51%) as primary obstacles in building their AI workforce. Yet despite these shortfalls, only 10% of respondents said a lack of skilled personnel is their primary barrier to AI expansion, suggesting that many organizations view infrastructure as the more immediate problem.
Additional findings from the 2025 State of AI Infrastructure Report illustrate how deployment strategies, storage choices, and workforce preparation are changing amid mounting pressures:
- The public cloud remains the primary location for AI training data as it’s used by 68% of respondents, though 54% also rely on colocation to supplement storage and performance needs.
- On-premises data centers play a small role in AI efforts. Just 20% of organizations store their AI training data locally, and only 36% intend to use those environments for training or inference workloads.
- GPU-as-a-service adoption continues to rise, with 40% of workplaces now using external vendors — up from 34% last year — while public cloud deployments climbed from 30% to 34%.
- Every respondent’s organization is offering some form of AI training, most commonly through embedded tools (63%), in-house programs (62%), and external certifications (59%).
“The question isn’t just whether a provider has the infrastructure you need today, but whether it’s building the systems and energy solutions to meet the AI workloads you’ll want tomorrow,” Mallory continued. “Bringing new capacity online takes years, not months, and that timeline has real consequences. The most successful companies recognize that planning is a competitive advantage, and they’re moving early so their capabilities match their ambitions. We’re seeing high growth and potential in areas like Atlanta, Dallas, Denver, and others and continuing to invest in those regions. “
To learn more about Flexential’s high-density compute solutions, visit www.flexential.com.
Resources to turn planning into action:
- 2025 State of AI Infrastructure Report: Explore how enterprises are adapting their infrastructure strategies to meet the demands of AI at scale — including long-range planning, technical readiness, and workforce challenges. Download the report.
- AI Strategy Workshop: Take control of your AI journey with a tailored roadmap that aligns technology, governance, and business outcomes. Our experts guide your teams through a structured discovery process, risk and policy assessment, infrastructure evaluation, and delivery of a custom strategy for responsible AI enablement. Learn more and get started.
- FlexTalk Webinar: AI at Scale — Why Tomorrow’s Data Center Starts Now: A conversation on how enterprises can prepare their data center strategies to meet the surging demands of AI — from long-term planning horizons to the infrastructure investments needed to stay ahead. Register here.
About Flexential
Flexential empowers the IT journey of the most complex businesses by offering customizable IT solutions designed for today’s demanding high-density computing requirements. With colocation, cloud, connectivity, data protection, and professional services, the FlexAnywhere® platform anchors our services in 40 data centers across 18 highly connected markets on a scalable 100Gbps+ private network backbone. Flexential solutions are strategically engineered to meet the most stringent challenges in security, compliance, and resiliency. Experience the power of IT flexibility and how we enable digital transformation at www.flexential.com.
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Media Contact
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Corporate Marketing
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Christian Rizzo
Gregory FCA for Flexential
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