Dublin, Jan. 30, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — The “Modular Data Center Market – Global Industry Size, Share, Trends, Opportunity, and Forecast, 2021-2031” has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com’s offering.
The Global Modular Data Center Market is projected to experience substantial growth, expanding from USD 28.44 Billion in 2025 to USD 76.11 Billion by 2031, achieving a CAGR of 17.83%. Modular data centers are defined as portable, pre-engineered facilities composed of interlocking units that contain essential IT infrastructure, along with cooling and power components. The market represents a response to the critical demand for scalability and rapid deployment, enabling organizations to swiftly increase capacity to manage data surges. Furthermore, the transition toward sustainable operations is fueling adoption, as these prefabricated structures generally provide better energy efficiency and a smaller carbon footprint than traditional construction methods.
Despite these benefits, the sector encounters a major obstacle regarding the integration of modern units with aging legacy infrastructure, which often leads to technical complications and delayed implementation. According to AFCOM, 42% of respondents in 2024 expressed interest in a hybrid construction strategy that combines prefabricated modular facilities with traditional techniques. This statistic emphasizes the industry’s gradual but measured shift toward modularity as it navigates the operational challenges inherent in existing environments.
Market Drivers: The sector is being fundamentally reshaped by the increasing demand for reduced time-to-market and rapid deployment, a trend intensified by the explosive rise of artificial intelligence and high-density computing. As enterprises and hyperscalers compete to establish infrastructure, conventional construction timelines are struggling to keep pace with the velocity of data generation.
Modular solutions provide a crucial speed advantage, allowing operators to bring capacity online months or even years ahead of standard schedules. This urgency is evident in the scale of current developments; according to JLL, in January 2025, the colocation and hyperscale segments were projected to break ground on 10 gigawatts (GW) of new projects globally during the year. Manufacturers are meeting this need with pre-integrated solutions, such as Vertiv’s modular overhead infrastructure launched in March 2025, which demonstrated the ability to deploy up to 85% faster on-site than traditional stick-build methods.
The push for sustainable and energy-efficient data center solutions further accelerates market adoption, as operators adopt green technologies to manage the intense thermal output of modern workloads. Modular data centers enable the precise inclusion of advanced cooling systems, like liquid cooling, which are often expensive and complex to retrofit into legacy facilities. This move toward efficient, factory-built thermal management is reflected in recent surveys. According to AFCOM, in May 2025, 83% of data center operators reported plans to deploy prefabricated cooling modules, a notable increase from the prior year that underscores the reliance on modularity to achieve sustainability goals. These factory-assembled units not only optimize Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) through stricter engineering controls but also significantly lower the carbon footprint associated with on-site material inefficiency and construction waste.
Market Challenges: A significant barrier to the expansion of the Global Modular Data Center Market is the integration of modern modular units with aging legacy infrastructure. Although prefabricated modules are engineered for energy efficiency and high-density performance, older facilities often lack the supporting cooling capacities and power architectures needed to sustain these advanced interlocking units. This technological discrepancy compels data center operators to initiate extensive and expensive retrofitting projects before deployment can proceed, effectively neutralizing the speed-to-market advantage that typically drives modular adoption. Consequently, the technical complexity required to harmonize these disparate systems creates operational bottlenecks, leading to delays in implementation and hesitation among potential buyers.
This structural incompatibility is demonstrated by the industry’s difficulty in improving efficiency metrics within existing footprints. According to the Uptime Institute, the global data center industry reported a stagnant average Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) ratio of 1.56 in 2024, a figure that has remained largely unchanged due to the technical limitations of the vast install base of aging legacy facilities. This statistic highlights the prevalence of outdated infrastructure that is ill-equipped to interface with modern technologies. As organizations are forced to direct capital toward upgrading or stabilizing these obsolete on-site environments rather than acquiring new capacity, the uptake of modular solutions is directly impeded, thereby slowing the overall growth of the market.
Market Trends
The proliferation of Micro-Modular Data Centers for Edge Deployments is becoming a critical trend, driven by the need to process latency-sensitive workloads near the source rather than in centralized hyperscale facilities. Unlike massive core data centers, these granular, ruggedized units are designed for installation in diverse, space-limited environments such as urban rooftops, manufacturing floors, and telecom towers to support IoT and 5G ecosystems. This transition toward decentralized architecture allows operators to rapidly scale network density and ensure sovereign AI performance. A prime example of this distribution is evident in recent projects; according to DCD, in December 2025, BDx Data Centers was recognized at the ‘DCD>Awards 2025’ for deploying a national AI platform comprising over 50 distinct Edge sites in just 73 days, illustrating the speed and scale at which micro-modular solutions are being implemented.
Simultaneously, the implementation of AI-Enabled Infrastructure Management Systems is becoming indispensable for overseeing the complexity of these distributed and increasingly high-density environments. As modular units multiply across remote locations, manual operation becomes impractical, necessitating advanced software capable of autonomous real-time optimization. These smart systems use machine learning algorithms to predict component failures, balance power loads, and dynamically adjust cooling parameters, ensuring reliability without human intervention on-site. The market’s aggressive move toward such intelligent, AI-ready infrastructure is reflected in manufacturer performance; according to Vertiv, in October 2025, the company’s ‘Third Quarter 2025 Results’ reported an approximate 60% increase in organic orders compared to the previous year, a surge attributed primarily to the accelerating adoption of AI-driven data center technologies and their associated management ecosystems.
Key Players Profiled in the Modular Data Center Market
- International Business Machines Corporation
- Schneider Electric SE
- Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd.
- Hewlett Packard Enterprise Development LP
- Dell Technologies
- Vertiv Co.
- Cannon Technologies Ltd.
- Rittal Gmbh & Co. KG
- Baselayer Technology LLC
- Bladeroom Group Ltd.
Key Attributes:
| Report Attribute | Details |
| No. of Pages | 181 |
| Forecast Period | 2025 – 2031 |
| Estimated Market Value (USD) in 2025 | $28.44 Billion |
| Forecasted Market Value (USD) by 2031 | $76.11 Billion |
| Compound Annual Growth Rate | 17.8% |
| Regions Covered | Global |
For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/4n5vva
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- Modular Data Center Market
