U.S. Firms Seek Service Partners for AI-Ready Hybrid Clouds – ISG - August 20, 2025

As enterprises in the U.S. execute hybrid multicloud strategies, many are turning to service providers that use AI and automation to ease cloud and data center management, according to a new research report published today by Information Services Group (ISG), a global AI-centered technology research and advisory firm.

The 2025 ISG Provider Lens Private/Hybrid Cloud — Data Center Services report for the U.S. finds that the rapid adoption of technologies such as generative AI and large language models (LLMs) has created unprecedented demand for data processing and storage, making data centers even more critical for enterprise operations. Service providers are helping organizations address many data center challenges, especially the need for scalability, high-speed connectivity and regulatory compliance.

Anay Nawathe, ISG

“AI is transforming the digital landscape, and data centers are at the heart of these changes,” said Anay Nawathe, ISG cloud delivery lead for the Americas. “Service providers are delivering the tools and expertise enterprises need to build infrastructure that supports AI.”

Providers are helping companies virtualize workloads, move them to cloud or colocation data centers and manage them with cloud-agnostic tools, the report says. The transition from traditional data centers to cloud-based infrastructure can improve scalability, security and efficiency. Reducing IT spending is a growing priority for U.S. enterprises as they face macroeconomic uncertainty on several fronts. Providers’ managed services include observability and automation to improve enterprise cloud operations and FinOps frameworks to manage cloud costs.

AI and ML bring valuable new capabilities to managed services for both private and hybrid clouds, ISG says. These include algorithms to analyze real-time data and logs and metrics to detect anomalies and forecast disruptions. Many U.S. enterprises want to use AI and ML but do not know how to start. They seek AI-ready infrastructure consulting that includes design, implementation and management.

Enterprises distributing workloads across private and public clouds need to optimize the placement of those workloads to gain the full benefits of cloud-based computing. They are taking advantage of AI-powered features in managed services that automatically determine the best placement of each workload based on cost, performance requirements, resource availability and regulations.

Security is a high priority for companies that migrate data and applications to hybrid clouds, and providers are integrating security operations into their services, ISG says. Enterprises use these features, including continuous monitoring, advanced threat detection and rapid incident response mechanisms, to ensure a consistent security posture across all managed environments.

“Companies are trusting critical workloads to hybrid clouds and the services that manage them,” said Shashank Rajmane, senior manager and principal analyst, ISG Provider Lens Research, and author of the report. “They rely on service providers to enforce security policies and automate data governance and compliance across all parts of that distributed infrastructure.”

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