Data Center Facility Management & O&M Services Market (2026-2036)

The growth of this market is mainly driven by the rapid build-out of data center capacity for cloud and AI workloads, the persistent shortage of qualified critical facility staff that pushes operators to outsource, and the high cost of outages, which keeps owners focused on uptime and disciplined maintenance. However, the in-house operations models of hyperscalers and large colocation operators, together with labor cost inflation and pressure on contract pricing, restrain the growth of this market.

Furthermore, maintenance services for liquid cooling systems, remote operations and AI-driven predictive maintenance, and rapid capacity growth in the Gulf, India, and Southeast Asia are expected to offer growth opportunities for the stakeholders in this market. However, skills gaps for liquid cooling and high-density facilities, the cybersecurity of building management and operational technology systems, and liability under service level agreements remain major challenges impacting the growth of this market. Additionally, consolidation through acquisitions of critical facility specialists, the shift toward integrated and self-performed service contracts, and workforce academies run with hyperscalers are prominent trends in this market.

The Data Center Facility Management & O&M Services Market comprises third-party services that operate and maintain the physical infrastructure of data centers. These include critical facility operations and site engineering; maintenance of electrical infrastructure (UPS systems, switchgear, PDUs, and batteries), air cooling and mechanical plant, liquid cooling systems (CDUs, cold plates, and coolant management), standby power and fuel, and fire protection and life safety systems; monitoring and remote operations, including DCIM-based monitoring and predictive maintenance; and soft services such as critical-environment cleaning and security. Maintenance and service contracts sold by equipment manufacturers are included in the market value. Construction, design, and commissioning of new facilities, fit-out works, equipment and spare parts sales, software licenses, and IT managed services are excluded, as is the cost of in-house operations staff employed directly by data center owners. The market ecosystem extends from equipment manufacturers and specialist subcontractors to integrated facility management providers, OEM service organizations, independent critical facility and MEP specialists, and the hyperscale, colocation, enterprise, and edge operators that buy these services.

The market is experiencing strong growth driven by the scale of new capacity. JLL expects about 97 GW of new data center capacity to be added worldwide between 2025 and 2030, which would roughly double global capacity to about 200 GW, and Cushman & Wakefield reported 31.7 GW of capacity under construction worldwide in 2025, more than double the level of 2024. The International Energy Agency estimated global data center electricity use at about 415 TWh in 2024 and projected about 945 TWh by 2030. Higher power use means more UPS, switchgear, generator, and cooling capacity to maintain at every site, and AI campuses bring higher rack densities and liquid cooling that raise the technical content of each maintenance visit.

Operators already buy a large part of this work from outside providers. In the Uptime Institute 2024 Data Center Maintenance Survey, 81% of respondents used third parties to maintain switchboards and breakers and 75% for transformers, while 84% used the original equipment manufacturer for generators. Staffing is reinforcing this pattern. In the Uptime Institute Staffing and Recruitment Survey 2025, 64% of operators had staff leave in the previous 12 months and 37% ranked hiring among their top two challenges, and for the first time more operators found senior staff harder to recruit and retain than early-career staff.

Uptime risk keeps maintenance quality at the top of the owner agenda. Power caused 54% of impactful outages in 2024, according to the Uptime Institute Annual Outage Analysis 2025, and the 2026 edition found that UPS systems, transfer switches, and generators account for most power failures. Nearly 40% of organizations had a major outage caused by human error in the previous three years, and failure to follow procedures was cited in 58% of those cases. Owners therefore buy disciplined maintenance programs, documented methods of procedure, and trained shift teams as a direct means of reducing outage risk, a requirement reinforced by NFPA 70B-2023, which made electrical equipment maintenance a standard rather than a recommended practice.

The supply side is consolidating and moving toward self-performed technical work. CBRE managed about 1,300 data centers globally in 2026 and reported that revenue from its critical infrastructure services rose 71% year on year in the first quarter of 2026, driven by Data Center Solutions and Pearce. Equipment manufacturers are building service depth at the same time: Vertiv reported about 5,000 field service engineers and more than 300 service centers in its 2025 annual report, and launched Liquid Cooling Services and the AI-based Vertiv Next Predict service. Together with new capacity in the Gulf, India, and Southeast Asia, these developments point to sustained growth in data center facility management and O&M services, moderated by the in-house models of the largest hyperscalers and the limited supply of skilled technicians.