How automation is changing the human element in data centers

How many on-prem IT professionals does it take to run a data center? The number might drop even further in coming years.

The push to automate data centers is commonplace these days, and many believe that AI can make things more efficient from a personnel perspective. Michael Gale, chief marketing officer at AI and data company EDB, told IT Brew that as enterprises employ AI for tasks with repeatable patterns, like rebooting systems, humans will be increasingly left to take the outlier events.

“Those moments of crisis or moments of learning are going to be really, really human-oriented,” Gale said. “Particularly as AI moves from these sort of incubated experiments to mainline production.”

Remote-controlling the room where it happens. This automation could mean more workers monitoring data center infrastructure remotely. According to Lightcast, some 11% of job postings for data center technician and engineer roles were remote in 2025, up from 6% in 2024.

Data centers, Gale pointed out, are now mostly automated with human supervision: “The coin has turned very aggressively with AI over the last two or three years. You just can’t hire enough humans to manage these data centers at the quality level necessary, unless you can rapidly automate tasks and free up humans to do more complex stuff.”

Andy Stone, the CTO for the Americas at Everpure (formerly Pure Storage) thinks of using AI in data centers as analogous to how electricians employ apprentices.

“We still need to have the electrician who knows how this should be done, what the end result should look like [and be] ultimately responsible,” Stone said. “Then you have the…apprentices, these extra people doing a lot of the other work and helping.That’s where we want to land, globally, on the whole AI message. Use the right tool for the right outcome.”

What to do with this knowledge. Stone said that data center companies want to do more with less. He recommended IT professionals focus on upskilling in AI and understand how the technology can serve as an effective tool—as well as its limits.

“A lot of C-level folks, they’re sitting up at the top and they’re hearing stories…AI can make lunch for you,” Stone said. “What we have to do is get to some sort of balance.

Although the push to integrate AI is strong right now, Stone warned that professionals should wait for the pendulum to move. “We can’t say, ‘We can replace every IT job in the data center with AI,’” he said. “Use the tool for the right outcomes…but understand that there are limitations that are involved, as well.”