Marlon Oliver, SVP EMEA at Flexera, argues that the following technology of large-scale information centre investments will solely ship long-term worth if each pound of spend is clearly linked to utilisation, outcomes and emissions.
BlackRock’s £500 million dedication to UK information centres is an indication of rising confidence within the nation’s digital infrastructure. There is no such thing as a query that demand for cloud companies, information storage, and synthetic intelligence is accelerating. The dimensions of funding is thrilling.
Nevertheless, companies must scale fastidiously if they need it to work long-term, as when digital infrastructure grows too shortly, prices can shortly spiral, and assets can go unused. There’s additionally an environmental implication that companies must plan for – particularly for companies working within the EU who can be impacted by the 2026 CSRD reporting necessities.
In fact, investing for progress just isn’t solely essential – it’s strategic. Whereas prices are sometimes considered critically, they are often highly effective enablers when clearly linked to enterprise worth and affect. Each pound spent should serve a function, driving measurable outcomes that help our long-term imaginative and prescient.
Overcoming the problem of overspending
Managing cloud and infrastructure spend is commonly one of many greatest challenges for organisations in the present day. In Flexera’s 2025 State of the Cloud report, 84% of respondents stated cloud spend is their prime concern, with practically a 3rd of organisations already spending greater than $12 million yearly on public cloud companies. With budgets exceeding limits by a mean of 17%, there’s a clear want for higher visibility and management.
Overspending typically occurs when organisations construct extra capability than they really want within the hope of maintaining with demand. Whereas this may occasionally seem to be forward-looking planning, surplus capability might be costly and doesn’t all the time ship proportional worth.
And whereas price management will all the time be a precedence, spending just isn’t all the time a foul factor. When the worth gained is larger than the spend itself, that is the mindset that turns funding into actual progress.
As an alternative, taking a proactive, data-driven method permits leaders to anticipate demand and allocate assets extra strategically. By intently monitoring assets and optimising utilisation, organisations can ensure that each pound they make investments delivers worth.
Governance and operational oversight
Shortly rising infrastructure brings its personal challenges. Many organisations have a multi-cloud and hybrid setup, which regularly entails a number of totally different suppliers, which might change into exhausting to handle with out clear governance guidelines. These embody insurance policies on who can present assets, how prices are tracked, and the way workloads are distributed, which implies managing these a number of environments turns into troublesome and extra advanced. Sources can simply be duplicated with out clear oversight.
The larger situation isn’t simply rushed choices; its choices being made in isolation. Establishing one clear decision-making group that brings IT, finance, and management collectively can keep away from conflicting and blended priorities. It creates a single, shared view of spend and utilization, and helps guarantee assets are used the place they’ve probably the most affect.
FinOps groups proceed to play a rising function on this panorama. In 2025, the variety of organisations utilizing, or planning to make use of, a FinOps workforce rose eight proportion factors year-on-year, based on a current business report. These groups present the monetary oversight and analytical perception wanted to handle cloud and infrastructure prices successfully. Bringing ITAM and FinOps into the identical course of provides leaders real-time information and a extra correct overview of utilization earlier than they make investments additional.
Generative AI is an effective instance of why this joint method might be efficient. The identical business report discovered that 72% of organisations are actually utilizing generative AI companies not directly. These workloads add important compute and storage demand, which might shortly drive-up cloud prices and vitality consumption if not monitored. Organisations with robust governance and FinOps processes are higher geared up to measure the affect of AI adoption and hold each budgets and sustainability targets on monitor.
Environmental duty issues
Because the variety of information centres grows, so does the vitality utilization and their environmental footprint. It isn’t sufficient for organisations to assert sustainability ambitions. With rules just like the EU’s CSRD coming into impact from 2026, companies might want to measure, monitor, and report their IT-related emissions in additional element, together with cloud utilization and information centre operations.
That is the place having stable information and governance processes in place turns into necessary. Organisations want visibility into which belongings they’ve, how effectively they’re getting used, and what their general vitality footprint seems like with a view to keep forward of compliance necessities and get the total image of their affect.
ITAM and FinOps will help by chopping again unused assets, adjusting cloud capability to match demand, and monitoring emissions towards sustainability targets. Some sensible methods for companies to economize and minimize emissions are by operating solely the cloud companies they really want, switching off servers once they’re not in use, and changing previous tools on the proper time so it makes use of much less vitality.
Taking a focused method to sustainability helps organisations present they’re critical about their commitments, moderately than simply ticking containers. It additionally makes it simpler to reply questions from regulators, companions, and the general public when it comes all the way down to it.
Wanting forward
The UK’s information centre market is getting into a pivotal part. Funding at this scale presents a possibility, nevertheless it additionally raises expectations for accountable progress. Organisations that embed robust governance, monetary oversight, and sustainability into their planning can be higher positioned to learn from these investments. These that don’t danger inefficiency, wasted spend, and reputational harm over time.
In the end, by investing in digital infrastructure, organisations could make extra cautious, knowledgeable choices that stability progress, price, and sustainability. The method of mixing stable ITAM and FinOps practices with clear environmental reporting and cross-functional collaboration can guarantee organisations that their information centre investments ship long-term worth and accountability. With the UK information centre market persevering with to develop, organisations even have a singular alternative to construct infrastructure that’s each scalable and sustainable from the outset.
