Uptime Institute has published their Annual outage analysis 2026 report, which analyses recent data on the causes, frequency and consequences of IT and data centre outages.
AMPS members have been given exclusive access to the report, which can be accessed via the Technical Document Library.
Four weeks of Uptime Intelligence for AMPS members
The report comes via Uptime Intelligence, a subscription service offering industry-leading research, insight and data-driven analysis focused on digital infrastructure.
AMPS members can also apply for a 4-week evaluation to unlock Uptime Intelligence’s premium research.
Key findings from their Annual outage analysis 2026 report
- For the fifth consecutive year, Uptime Intelligence research suggests outage frequency (on a per-site basis) is declining. However, the pace of improvement has slowed compared with previous years, and around one in 10 still say their last outage had serious or severe impacts.
- External infrastructure failures are becoming more prominent in publicly reported outages. Outages linked to fibre and connectivity issues are rising and are more likely to result in extended disruptions.
- Outage costs continue to rise slowly. More than half (57%) of the respondents to Uptime’s 2025 annual survey say their most recent major outage cost more than $100,000. For the second year in a row, one in five say their most recent impactful outage cost more than $1 million.
- Power remains the leading cause of impactful outages, but risks are evolving. Failures involving UPS systems, transfer switches and generators are dominant; however, worsening grid constraints and high-density workloads are introducing new pressure points.
- Operators are adapting investment strategies toward automation and control systems to manage complexity, while resiliency assessments remain more focused on internal systems than on external and systemic risks.
- The frequency of major fires at data centres have increased gradually in recent years, with lithium-ion batteries in UPS systems a clear contributing factor. However, this rise in incidents may be partly explained by the rapid build-out of new facilities, rather than the inherent risk of deploying these batteries.
You can find out more by downloading the report from our Technical Document Library.
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