Data Center Consulting for Equipment Vendors

Quick answer: DC Market Insights helps makers of data center equipment and software, including cooling, power and UPS, racks, networking, storage and DCIM, answer the questions that set their plans: how big their market is, who holds share, where it is growing, what customers pay and which competitors they meet in each account. The work starts from our published models of the upstream data center market and is tailored to each vendor’s own products and regions.

Equipment demand is moving faster than most planning cycles. Vertiv, a maker of data center power and cooling equipment, reported 2025 net sales of USD 10.23 billion, organic growth of 26%, and a year-end backlog of USD 15.0 billion, up 109% on a year earlier, according to its fourth-quarter 2025 results. Its fourth-quarter organic orders rose about 252%. Behind that sits spend by the buyers: Alphabet alone guided to USD 175 to 185 billion of capital expenditure for 2026, roughly double its 2025 level.

The product mix is shifting too, but more slowly than the headlines suggest. The Uptime Institute Global Data Center Survey 2025 found that average rack densities continue to rise slowly, driven by racks in the 10 kW to 30 kW range, and that few facilities exceed 30 kW. Uptime’s cooling systems survey found direct liquid cooling in use at 22% of surveyed operators, the least common cooling method measured. For a vendor, the gap between a fast-growing niche and a slow-moving installed base is exactly where a plan goes right or wrong.

DC Market Insights is the data center practice of Credence Research, a research and consulting firm founded in 2015 with 200+ analysts and consultants and 450+ consulting projects a year. Our vendor work draws on the same models behind our 519 published data center reports.

Which equipment vendors do we work with?

We work with makers of the physical and software layers that every data center depends on: cooling, power and UPS, racks and enclosures, networking, storage and DCIM software. Each group sells into the same buildings but faces a different market structure, so the questions and the models change with the product.

Cooling and thermal management

Cooling vendors are living through the biggest product shift in the sector: from room-level air cooling towards rear-door heat exchangers, direct-to-chip liquid cooling and immersion. Their key questions are how fast each technology grows, at what rack density customers switch, and how much of the installed base will be retrofitted rather than replaced. Uptime’s cooling survey found that most operators believe direct liquid cooling is needed above 20 kW per rack, and that higher rack densities were the leading reason for adoption, cited by 68% of respondents.

Power, UPS and electrical distribution

Makers of UPS systems, switchgear, busways, power distribution units, generators and batteries sell in proportion to the megawatts being built, but their order books depend on project timing. The IEA reports that wait times for transformers and cables have doubled in the past three years (IEA, Energy and AI). Power vendors need forecasts that separate capacity announced from capacity that will actually be energised and fitted out.

Racks, enclosures and containment

Rack makers face a split market: standard enterprise and colocation racks on one side, and open and hyperscale designs on the other, with heavier, higher-power racks for AI systems adding a third set of requirements. Our OCP Rack Market report values the Open Compute Project rack market at USD 1.63 billion in 2025, rising to USD 13.34 billion by 2035, a compound annual growth rate of 23.4%.

Networking and interconnect

Switch, optics and cabling vendors sell into both the data hall and the links between halls and campuses. AI clusters change the mix, because training systems need far more east-west bandwidth inside a cluster than traditional enterprise workloads. Vendors need demand split by data center type and by the share of capacity going to AI.

Storage

Storage vendors need to know how demand divides between hyperscale, colocation and enterprise buyers, and how quickly data volumes from AI translate into installed capacity in each region. Their planning question is usually where to place sales and channel effort, rather than whether the market grows.

DCIM and management software

DCIM, monitoring and automation software vendors sell per site, per rack or per megawatt, and increasingly into the power and cooling systems that higher densities make harder to run. Their questions are market size by deployment type, the number of sites they can reach, and which hardware vendors bundle competing software.

What questions do equipment vendors bring to us?

Most vendor projects start with one of six questions, and each leads to a defined output that a product, sales or strategy team can use directly.

What does DC Market Insights do for equipment vendors?

We give vendors market numbers they can plan, sell and report against, tested two ways and split along their own product lines. The detail of each strand is below.

Market size and share

We size the vendor’s market in value and in units, then estimate share by competitor from filings, shipment evidence, interviews and the installed base. For listed competitors, reported revenue is the first anchor; for private ones, we build share from capacity, pricing and channel checks. The result is a share table that adds up to the total and shows its own uncertainty.

Growth by segment, region and country

Data center demand is concentrated. The IEA reports that the United States accounted for 45% of global data center electricity use in 2024 and China for 25%. Cloudscene data published by Statista in March 2024 counted 5,381 data centers in the United States, against 521 in Germany and 514 in the United Kingdom (Economy Middle East). Concentration goes down to city level: our UK Data Center Thermal Management Market report shows London and Slough holding more than 65% of UK spend. We split growth to the level at which the vendor allocates sales resources.

Competitors per account and customer type

A vendor rarely competes with every rival everywhere. We map which competitors appear in each customer group, such as hyperscalers, large colocation operators, enterprises and edge builders, and in each region, along with their product range, partnerships and recent wins that are on the public record. Sales teams use the output to prepare for specific tenders.

Pricing

We build price bands by product type, rating and region from public price lists, tenders, distributor checks and interviews. Pricing work also covers how prices move with volume and contract length, and where a premium for liquid cooling or high-density designs is likely to narrow as more suppliers enter.

Channel and go-to-market

We assess how buyers in each market purchase: direct from the manufacturer, through contractors and integrators, through distributors, or bundled with servers or modular data centers. For a vendor entering a new country, we compare routes to market and the partners that already hold the relationships.

AI-driven shifts such as liquid cooling

AI changes both the size and the shape of equipment demand. The IEA expects electricity use in accelerated servers, driven mainly by AI, to grow by 30% a year in its Base Case (IEA, energy demand from AI). Uptime’s survey announcement found that roughly one-third of data center owners and operators already perform some AI training or inference. We build adoption curves that separate new AI halls, where liquid cooling and high-power racks are the default, from retrofits of existing halls, where adoption is slower and depends on floor loading, water and power.

Who inside a vendor uses this work?

Different teams inside the same vendor use the same model for different jobs, which is why we build it in a form every team can open.

• Strategy and corporate development: market entry, portfolio choices, acquisition screening and the market chapter in investor materials.
• Product management: which technologies to build, at what rating, for which customers, and when.
• Sales leadership and sales operations: territory sizing, quotas, account plans and competitor briefings.
• Marketing: market figures for launches, analyst briefings and thought leadership that will stand up to checking.
• Finance and investor relations: a consistent external view of the market against which to explain growth and share.

Our clients include Schneider Electric, Siemens, Honeywell, Mitsubishi Electric, HPE and Seagate Technology.

How is AI investment changing the equipment market?

AI investment is raising the volume of equipment demand and changing its mix at the same time, but the change reaches the installed base more slowly than it reaches new builds. A vendor’s plan has to model both.

On volume, the buyers’ budgets are growing quickly. Alphabet reported capital expenditure of USD 91.4 billion in 2025 and guided to USD 175 to 185 billion for 2026, according to its fourth-quarter 2025 results. The IEA reports that global investment in data centers reached around half a trillion dollars in 2024, having nearly doubled since 2022.

On mix, the picture is more gradual. Uptime’s 2025 survey of more than 800 owners and operators found densities rising slowly and few facilities above 30 kW per rack, while direct liquid cooling was in use at 22% of operators in its cooling survey. Both statements can be true alongside fast-growing liquid cooling sales, because a small number of very large AI campuses can account for a large share of new spend.

The practical result is that two forecasts are needed: one for new AI capacity, built from announced campuses, capex guidance and power availability, and one for the existing base, built from refresh cycles and retrofit economics. Adding them, rather than applying one growth rate to the whole market, is what keeps a vendor’s plan realistic.

How does a vendor engagement work?

Every engagement runs in five steps, and each step produces something you can use before the next one starts.

1. Scope the decision. A call to agree the decision, the products in scope, the market definition, the regions and customer types, the cases and the deadline. You receive a written scope and a quote.
2. Start from our models. Our analysts pull the relevant upstream and demand-side models and set out what must change to fit your product lines.
3. Gather evidence. We add filings, trade data, tenders, price checks and, where you share it, your own sales data, then test key assumptions with operators, contractors, distributors and buyers.
4. Build and reconcile. We build the market bottom-up and top-down, reconcile the two, estimate share and split the result by segment, region and customer type, with base, upside and downside cases.
5. Present and stand behind it. A findings session with your strategy, product or sales teams, and follow-up questions answered after delivery.

What you receive

DC Exclusive: what does our upstream model library give an equipment vendor?

It gives a vendor a tested starting point for almost any equipment market: our library of 519 published data center market models, each with history from 2020, a 2025 base year and a forecast to 2035, split by segment, region and country. The upstream layer covers power, cooling, construction and equipment, and the other four layers show where the demand for that equipment comes from.

Models come in global, regional and country editions. Our UK Data Center Thermal Management Market report values UK spend at USD 993.9 million in 2025, rising to USD 3,398.9 million by 2035, and our OCP Rack Market report covers open hyperscale rack designs to 2035. A cooling or rack vendor starts from those baselines rather than a blank sheet.

Three proprietary datasets are in development and will feed future vendor work: a Capacity Tracker (live and pipeline MW by country, city and operator), a Colocation Price Index (USD per kW per month by market) and a Deal Tracker (M&A, funding, land and power deals).

How do we build equipment market numbers that hold up?

We build every equipment market two ways, bottom-up from units and prices and top-down from capacity and capex, and only use a figure once the two agree or the gap is explained.

• Bottom-up: units shipped or installed, multiplied by average selling price, by product type and region, cross-checked against the reported data center revenue of listed vendors. Vertiv’s reported 2025 net sales of USD 10.23 billion, for example, set a floor for the markets it sells into.
• Top-down: capacity built and retrofitted, in megawatts, multiplied by equipment content per megawatt, and checked against total data center capex and investment from sources such as the IEA.
• Reconcile: where the two differ, we find the cause, such as a product counted in two markets, a regional price applied globally or a backlog counted as shipments, and fix it.
• Check the growth: every growth rate is recalculated from its endpoints. For the UK thermal management market, USD 993.9 million in 2025 rising to USD 3,398.9 million by 2035 implies growth of about 13% a year.
• Independent review: an editor who did not build the model checks figures, growth rates and sources before delivery.

Backlog deserves a special mention for vendors. A backlog that doubles in a year tells you orders are running ahead of shipments, not that the market has doubled. We size markets on shipments and installed value, and show orders and backlog separately so that a plan does not count the same demand twice.

Who leads our work for equipment vendors?

Vendor engagements are led by analysts who cover the upstream market every day, with our wider bench of 200+ analysts behind them.

• Satyabrat Rajawat, Senior Research Analyst, Strategic Advisory. Satyabrat covers power, cooling and rack equipment, the upstream markets that decide build cost and lead times. He works from trade data, company filings and equipment teardowns, and has contributed to more than 40 syndicated market studies.
• Amit Jain, Senior Consultant, ICT & Emerging Technologies. Amit heads our ICT consulting and syndicated research practice and has more than 20 years in technology market research. He leads work on market sizing and vendor benchmarking for data center infrastructure, cloud and telecom.
• Deepti Agrawal, Senior Editor, Research. Deepti is the final quality gate for our reports and consulting work. She checks models, growth rates and company profiles, and owns our house style.

Which DC Market Insights research supports work for equipment vendors?

Every vendor project links back to the published reports for the markets involved, so your team can see our baseline before we tailor it. Useful starting points:

• UK Data Center Thermal Management Market for cooling spend, growth and city concentration
• OCP Rack Market for hyperscale rack demand to 2035
• Iberia Data Center Market, valued at USD 11.53 billion in 2025, for demand in Spain and Portugal
• The full data center research library, organised in five layers

Related services: market sizing and forecasting, competitive intelligence and market entry and power strategy. See how we work with operators and hyperscalers, your customers, and all services on the consulting hub.

Frequently asked questions

What does a vendor engagement cost?

Fees are quoted per engagement and depend on the number of products, regions and competitors in scope, whether a published model already covers the market, and the deadline; you receive a written quote after the scoping call.

Can you estimate our competitors’ market share?

Yes. We estimate share from reported revenue for listed companies and from capacity, shipment, pricing and channel evidence for private ones, and we show the confidence range around each estimate. Every share table adds up to the market total.

Do you cover liquid cooling separately from air cooling?

Yes. We split cooling by technology, including direct-to-chip, immersion, rear-door and air-based systems, and separate new AI capacity from retrofits of existing halls, because adoption runs at different speeds in each.

Can you use our own sales data?

Yes, and it improves share and SOM estimates. Your data is used only for your engagement, and confidentiality terms are agreed in writing before any data is shared.

Can our marketing team publish figures from the work?

Usage rights are agreed in the engagement letter before work starts, including whether and how figures may be quoted in external materials.

How do we start?

Send us your products, the markets you want to understand and your deadline through the form below. A senior consultant will reply within one business day to arrange a scoping call.

Sources

• Vertiv: fourth quarter and full year 2025 results, SEC Form 8-K exhibit 99.1 (11 February 2026)
• Uptime Institute: Global Data Center Survey 2025 (29 July 2025)
• Business Wire: Uptime’s 15th annual Global Data Center Survey results (30 July 2025)
• Uptime Institute: Cooling systems survey 2025, DLC adoption remains slow and steady (Data Report 181) (July 2025)
• International Energy Agency: Energy and AI, executive summary (2025)
• International Energy Agency: Energy and AI, energy demand from AI (2025)
• Alphabet: fourth quarter and fiscal year 2025 results, SEC Form 8-K exhibit 99.1 (4 February 2026)
• Countries with the most data centers (Cloudscene via Statista, March 2024)