Data centers are central to enterprise IT— everything from enterprise apps to security technologies, network gear, servers, storage, and AI. Enterprises without the resources to build their own data centers lease space in colocation data centers, where inventory is at historic lows, or buy capacity in cloud providers’ data centers. The energy demands of AI, with its power-hungry GPU infrastructure, is pushing organizations to find innovative ways to optimize system performance, experiment with new cooling methods, and consider alternative energy sources. There’s an arms race today among some of tech’s top vendors (IBM/Red Hat, Broadcom, Dell, Cisco, HPE, NetApp, among others) to bring data centers into the AI age. Buyers are heavily focused on modernization and need to understand the strategies and products that will get them there.