Current State of DCIM and ITAM in 2026

From AI data center demand to Windows 11 refreshes, 2025 saw major shifts in hardware needs. People who understand the market can see these trends coming and capitalize off of them.

The next market shaping trends will present similar opportunities for executives and IT managers. Here’s where things stand at the start of 2026 and what’s on horizon.

6 DCIM and ITAM Market Trends in 2026

These are the most impactful trends for the next 12 months. 

1.AI Automation and Prediction 

Modern AI can automate tasks within management software, help allocate resources more effectively, and respond to security incidents quickly. IT teams can use these features to program notifications or autonomous actions. 

AI can also predict IT asset and data center performance, power usage, and track early warning signs of hardware issues. These features can all lead to cost reduction through lowered resource usage and downtime avoidance. Automating the inventory-taking process for IT hardware and data centers allows for more informed decision-making.

Many SaaS products already have these features in place, so managers can simply check their existing SaaS stack for AI-powered automation tools. 

2.Cloud-first Software

Whether organizations are integrating existing infrastructure with the cloud or subscribing to cloud-based services, they can benefit from the scalability and easy access to cloud-first ITAM and DCIM software. 

The cloud-first approach allows organizations to compile all their data in a single pane of glass from any location. This saves administrators’ time that would otherwise be spent pulling data and switching between platforms.

Outsourcing the hands-on aspects of DCIM and ITAM allows organizations to reduce in-house admin work and labor. Scaling up can be as simple as increasing capacity and subscription costs instead of hiring skilled staff to manage on-premise infrastructure. 

DCIM and ITAM Software Integrations

DCIM and ITAM may feel separate from organizational operations, but they need to function within the ecosystem of other business processes and software. 

IT administrators often require multiple platforms to find the information they need to manage infrastructure effectively. This leaves room for discrepancies across platforms, wasted company time, and human error. Finding a point of failure shouldn’t require several steps. 

With the proper integration of infrastructure management software, network monitoring, and real-time DEM, IT teams can see the full scope of the problem and quickly diagnose the root cause. Once these integrations are in place, IT can even set rules for integrated ticketing systems to save them time and provide all relevant information the moment an issue arises. 

The Blurring Line Between ITAM and FinOps

Enterprise Cloud and SaaS usage continues to rise, which has only reaffirmed the importance of FinOps to manage costs and navigate licensing. However, FinOps needs access to more than just a list of active licenses to effectively do their job. They need data on usage habits of end users, device performance information, and more. 

Combining ITAM and FinOps ensure both teams have greater visibility into the organization’s technology stack, allowing them to make more informed decisions about license agreements and procurement. 

Organizations can manage SaaS subscriptions alongside device-as-a-service and PC-as-a-service subscriptions because they are both contracts that can scale up and down with demand. 

IT hardware owned outright by an organization can fit into FinOps as well. FinOps can shape device procurement and retirement operations to ensure they meet the usage and budgetary requirements. Combining ITAM and FinOps processes can lead to more consistent application of company policies and more careful tracking of all company assets, software, and hardware. 

Cooling Optimization for DCIM

As the need for data centers to fuel AI grows, so does the need for innovations in data center management, particularly cooling. 

Liquid cooling is a common best practice, typically through the direct-to-chip method of bringing water to densely-packed racks of servers. However, immersion cooling, which involves submerging parts of the server in a specialized liquid to transfer the heat, is growing in popularity. 

Some organizations employ liquid cooling alongside air cooling, which was the more common cooling method for decades. In these hybrid-model data centers, liquid cooling targets the highest heat density areas while air cooling takes care of the rest. 

Organizations can manage more complex cooling needs and ensure hardware is performing optimally with DCIM. Heat generation from data centers changes significantly throughout the day depending on demand, so tracking usage and setting rules based on the data center’s characteristics can improve efficiency. 

Green IT Practices within DCIM and ITAM

With DCIM and ITAM, the environmentally conscious practice doesn’t have to cost more. 

For DCIM, increasing data center efficiency reduces the consumption of electricity and water, which is essential for achieving sustainability goals. Efficiency improvements can also reduce wear and tear on equipment and lengthen the hardware refresh lifecycle. 

Even with a lengthened lifecycle, all IT hardware must be replaced eventually. With the right ITAM practices, organizations can keep their IT assets out of landfills and bring in revenue by selling them off. 

A trustworthy ITAD provider can help organizations accomplish these goals and wipe the devices to maintain security and compliance standards. 

Who Are the Major DCIM and ITAM Vendors to Know Going into 2026?

The market for DCIM and ITAM services have roughly doubled in the past 5 years. Here is a high level overview of the vendors that have led the market through over that period

This list is not ranked and only covers some of the leading vendors in each market.

IBM

With its Maximo product, IBM offers a unified platform for IT to manage assets, monitor performance, and even plan operations investments more effectively. The Maximo Assistant, part of the larger Maximo AI Service, allows IT teams to chat with the integrated GenAI bot to cut through any confusion and give direct answers. 

Organizations can use Maximo to track assets for their entire lifecycle, from procurement to disposal. Admins can view suggestions from Maximo to improve lifecycle management practices and determine if an internal process meets compliance standards. 

Ivanti

The Ivanti Neurons for ITAM platform provides an infrastructure to maintain full visibility into all IT assets and their performance. Admins can integrate the Ivanti platform with CMDBs for better delivery of services, and set Ivanti Bots to track specific device health indicators. 

Ivanti emphasizes the ability to access its platforms via any location with its mobile app, which can be helpful when a quick touch or approval from management is needed to begin a time-sensitive process. Admins can track vendor agreements and licensing, connect other SaaS products, and log physical assets within this console. 

Schneider Electric

This is one of the largest players in the DCIM market, and it provides tools for IT to plan an effective rollout of new IT infrastructure, manage and monitor hybrid environments, and leverage predictive insights from its AI analytics.

The Schneider Electric NetBotz hardware helps organizations monitor data center operations directly from the source and alert admins to any security, heat, or humidity irregularities within its servers. 

ServiceNow

With its ITAM platform, ServiceNow provides insight into FinOps, asset procurement, hardware retirement, and system monitoring from its unified dashboard. This dashboard exists within the larger ServiceNow AI platform, allowing integrations across other ServiceNow products. 

Administrators can view all the relevant data in one place and set workflows based on custom rules. The ITAM platform also includes a dashboard that provides a snapshot of company-wide asset health and suggests unusual instances that admins can investigate.

Sunbird 

The Sunbird DCIM offering, Power IQ, acts as a central management console for all types of data centers, whether they are centralized, edge, etc.. The dcTrack dashboard shows inventory breakdowns of usage, device type, and key indicators such as power use and remaining cabinet space. 

This platform can integrate with numerous other vendors and gives admins the ability to effectively manage networking, capacity, and cooling within the data center. PowerIQ can detect load shifts and flag drops in capacity across the data center.

Vertiv 

This vendor offers several relevant SaaS products, including Trellis, which can monitor and optimize data center workloads in real time. Trellis offers customizable notifications and alarms depending on pre-set triggers. 

Administrators can plan out changes to data center infrastructure with Trellis advising on aspects such as hot spots, weight capacity, and power usage.

Conclusion

The DCIM and ITAM markets have matured rapidly. Whether it’s the latest in AI automation or new cooling architecture for data centers, these innovations present an opportunity for business leaders to take advantage.

ITAM and DCIM can function more effectively alongside other business operations, such as FinOps and IT incident response teams. IT management can benefit from AI features for prediction and monitoring as well. Company leaders can review its existing technology stack for areas where AI features could optimize how it manages IT assets and data centers.