Planon’s Robert Mostachetti offers this commentary on why the data center build-out needs better operations software. This article originally appeared in Insight Jam, an enterprise IT community that enables human conversation on AI.
Facilities management has long occupied an unglamorous corner of the enterprise, handled by maintenance teams, governed by spreadsheets, and rarely discussed at the leadership level. That era is ending – and the force ending it is the global data center construction boom.
According to JLL’s 2026 Global Data Center Outlook, the sector is on track for 14% compound annual growth through 2030, with nearly 100 gigawatts of new capacity expected between now and then. That effectively doubles global capacity within five years, and the price tag for that expansion is staggering: roughly $3 trillion in new investment. When capital commitments reach that scale, the conversation around ensuring these facilities run efficiently and profitably moves to the boardroom fast. And, unfortunately, data center managers are using systems that were designed for an entirely different kind of facility.
Most of the facilities management and integrated workplace management system (IWMS) platforms in use today were designed for a different kind of building. Corporate offices, hospitals, universities and logistics facilities are all complex in their own way, but they operate under a fundamentally different risk profile than a data center.
Why Data Centers are a Different Operational Animal
Unlike conventional commercial real estate, where maintenance is largely scheduled and failures are usually no more than inconvenient, data centers operate under continuous, zero-tolerance uptime requirements. As Accenture’s Data Center Trends 2026 report notes, the sector faces “a landscape brimming with both complexity and opportunity,” with advanced hybrid power models, next-generation liquid cooling, and distributed edge infrastructure. Operators must simultaneously maintain critical power, cooling, and building systems across multiple sites, each with its own asset hierarchies, maintenance histories, regulatory requirements, and SLA obligations.
Traditional facility platforms lack the integrations, the operational logic, and the asset hierarchy structures that data center environments require. Applying a generic CMMS or IWMS to a mission-critical facility creates inefficiency and introduces exactly the kind of fragmentation and human error that operators cannot afford.
When data center operators talk about their operational challenges, three issues surface consistently.
The first is disconnected systems. Most operators are running a patchwork of tools, including a data center infrastructure management (DCIM) platform for physical infrastructure visibility, a building management system (BMS) for environmental controls, an electric power management system (EPMS) for power distribution, and then some combination of spreadsheets or legacy CMMS tools for maintenance tracking. None of these systems talk to each other well.
When an alarm fires in the DCIM, a work order does not automatically appear in the maintenance queue. Someone has to bridge that gap manually, and manual handoffs in mission-critical environments create critical points of failure.
The second major challenge is compliance and audit readiness. Data centers face a growing body of regulatory requirements, and operators need to demonstrate that every inspection, maintenance task, and safety procedure has been completed, documented, and traceable. Generic facility platforms were not designed to produce that kind of audit-ready documentation at the asset level, across distributed sites, without significant manual effort.
The third is the colocation complexity problem. A significant share of the new capacity being built will be operated as colocation facilities serving multiple tenants. That means operators will need to manage service level obligations, control access across tenant boundaries, and provide transparent operational reporting to clients who have their own contractual rights to that information. Most general-purpose platforms have no native concept of this kind of multi-tenant governance.
Operational Layers Deserve the Same Investment Logic as the Infrastructure
The facility management platform should automate the creation and routing of work orders directly from live infrastructure data, so that when a system alarm fires, a qualified technician is already in motion before the problem compounds. It must maintain full maintenance histories and audit trails at the asset level across every site in the portfolio, and track energy consumption and cooling performance in a way that feeds sustainability reporting and regulatory compliance without requiring a separate data aggregation effort. And it gives colocation operators the visibility and reporting tools to manage SLA obligations with the kind of transparency tenants increasingly expect.
None of that happens if the operational software is an afterthought. And yet, in many new data center projects, that is exactly where it sits in the planning process.
What’s more, operators need to integrate their management platform into whatever ERP they’re running so the facilities management layer connects directly to that financial infrastructure. In this way, senior management can easily track the full cost of asset ownership, manage purchase orders, and reconcile energy costs.
The Operational Gap is a Strategy Question
The $3 trillion being committed to new data center infrastructure over the next five years represents one of the largest concentrated capital deployments in the history of commercial real estate.
The tools that manage maintenance, compliance, asset lifecycle, and energy performance in these facilities need to be built for the environment they are governing. Generic platforms introduce risk. Purpose-built platforms reduce it.
As the construction wave continues to crest, the organizations that will see the strongest returns on their data center investments are the ones that treat the operational layer with the same rigor they applied to the power plant on the roof and the cooling towers in the yard.
- The Data Center Build-Out Needs Better Operations Software - July 16, 2026
