The modern application landscape is defined by an ever-increasing hunger for both performance and power. For many businesses, AI initiatives offer the promise of achieving previously untapped levels of competitive success while intensifying the importance of harnessing value from private data on premises. Capturing the value from AI and other data-intensive workloads places increased pressure on traditional server environments. According to research from Informa TechTarget’s Enterprise Strategy Group:1
84% agreed: “The growth of AI (including generative AI) has us reevaluating our application deployment strategy.”
78% agreed: “We prefer to run AI applications on premises.”
Even for businesses without an AI initiative in place, the complexities of modern, large-scale IT fuel demand for greater server efficiency and a need to consolidate and simplify where possible. Given the scale of application environments at modern enterprises, simplicity must be provided at a fleet level, i.e., one that spans locations. In addition, server vendors cannot be easily switched from generation to generation. Therefore, improved performance and power efficiency must be considered at the system, portfolio, and roadmap level.
Beyond the need for increased performance and efficiency, the burden of ensuring cyber resilience is poised to increase, as AI has already helped boost the frequency and sophistication of cyberattacks. According to Enterprise Strategy Group research, 62% of IT decision-makers expect advances in AI to provide advantages to cyber adversaries.2 The increased sophistication of cyberattacks is also spurring a rapid evolution in the regulatory landscape. For example, the Digital Operations Resilience Act (DORA), which addresses financial organizations in the European Union, already includes considerations for information and communication technologies suppliers. Regulations such as these serve as precursor of what’s likely to come for the United States and will require businesses to apply more scrutiny to the security safeguards provided by server vendors and their supply chains.
The challenges of keeping pace with cyberthreats and incorporating emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, all while adhering to regulatory requirements, top the list of drivers of increased IT complexity in 2025 (see Figure 1).3
Ultimately, server infrastructure selection can no longer be a tactical implementation decision. Given the increased importance of security, fleet-level manageability, and a roadmap of performance and power efficiency, organizations should consider server partner selection strategic to business success.
1. Source: Enterprise Strategy Group Complete Survey Results, Understanding Workload, App, and Data Deployment and Migration Decision-making, July 2024.
2. Source: Enterprise Strategy Group Research Report, Beyond the GenAI Hype: Real-world Investments, Use Cases, and Concerns, August 2023.
3. Source: Enterprise Strategy Group Research Report, 2025 Technology Spending Intentions Survey, December 2024.