Office data centres are too old to cope with current demands, experts have claimed.
Modern computers must operate in rooms that were often designed up to 30 years ago that cannot provide adequate cooling, power, space or even the right floor support.
"Some of our data centres are 20 or 30 years old, and the requirements of today bear little resemblance to their original design specification," said Carl Greiner, senior vice-president of infrastructure at analyst Ovum, in an article in Computing.
Comments come as one analyst said in the same article that power consumption had leapt 15-fold in the space of five years at his firm, limiting the technology it could use.
Piecemeal planning and irrational additions rather than a strategic thought to the development of data centres were also blamed for the poor state of many rooms.
Although companies are often prepared to spend money on the technology and software, many are not budgeting enough for the location that the computers will rest in.
Unless firms start to treat integrity of systems equally with that of data, Mr Greiner warned that "overall service delivery will be compromised", risking disaster for a company.