Almost nine in ten surveyed UK IT leaders have experienced rising data centre infrastructure costs over the past year, as cyber threats, operational complexity, and changing technology requirements place additional pressure on investment budgets.
Research commissioned by 11:11 Systems found that 89% of UK respondents reported higher infrastructure costs, with an average increase of 14% during the previous 12 months. Fifteen per cent experienced increases exceeding 25%, illustrating the variation in financial pressure across organisations.
The findings form part of the 2027 State of IT Infrastructure Resilience study, conducted by analyst firm Data Protection Matters. The international survey covered more than 700 IT leaders across seven countries, including 163 respondents from the UK.
Cost pressures are coinciding with concerns about the security of critical business systems. Forty-one per cent of UK respondents identified attacks on production platforms as a leading data centre strategy concern, while 38% cited threats to identity systems and 37% highlighted rising storage or memory costs.
Complexity increases operational pressure —
Among respondents responsible for several hypervisor platforms or hybrid cloud environments, 49% identified operational complexity as a significant challenge. The same proportion highlighted unpredictable costs, while 48% cited skills shortages.
These problems can influence decisions about infrastructure migration, supplier selection, and the management of technology across different environments.
Replacing an established virtualisation platform, for example, may reduce licensing expenditure while introducing costs associated with migration, staff training, new operating procedures, and revised backup arrangements.
The financial assessment therefore needs to cover the entire operating environment rather than the price of individual licences or services.
Justin Giardina, chief technology officer at 11:11 Systems, said: “The decision is about more than license price: teams also need to weigh migration effort, operational complexity, security and recovery requirements.”
The research also found that 73% of UK respondents had experienced at least one cyberattack or breach during the preceding year, while 21% reported three or more incidents.
Thirty-nine per cent reported incidents involving the encryption of production data, rendering it unusable, while 33% reported damage or disruption affecting systems.
These findings describe the experiences of surveyed organisations, rather than an independently measured incident rate across all UK businesses.
Backup systems remain vulnerable —
Backup arrangements emerged as another concern. Although 60% of respondents said their backups had remained unaffected during attacks, 40% reported that at least some backup repositories had been compromised or disrupted.
Recovery planning must therefore account for the possibility that an incident could affect both operational systems and the infrastructure intended to restore them.
Maintaining copies of business data provides limited protection if those copies cannot be accessed, have been compromised, or depend on unavailable identity and management systems.
Effective recovery also requires organisations to understand which services must be restored first, how systems depend on one another, and whether recovery procedures have been tested under realistic conditions.
AI investment adds to infrastructure demands —
Artificial intelligence is becoming another consideration in infrastructure planning, although operational deployment remains uneven.
Sixty-two per cent of UK respondents said they were actively investing in AI tools for IT or security operations, while 29% were evaluating such technology without committing a budget.
However, only 20% reported having operational backup or disaster recovery capabilities enhanced by AI.
Looking towards 2027, 43% said they would definitely consider new cyber resilience, backup, or disaster recovery solutions, while another 40% said they probably would. These intentions indicate interest rather than confirmed purchasing decisions.
Organisations are consequently assessing infrastructure investment against several connected requirements, including operating costs, technical complexity, data protection, and the ability to restore essential services following disruption.
The research demonstrates the financial challenges involved in maintaining those capabilities, particularly where changing software licensing arrangements, rising hardware expenditure, and shortages of experienced IT staff affect the available options.
