Cisco exec on why on-prem data centers are back – and driving ‘deep-tech’ specialist demand – ZDNET

ZDNET’s key takeaways

• Data centers were once consolidating. Now they’re proliferating.
• AI is driving data center expansion within enterprises as well as externally
• Cisco exec sees growing opportunities in hardware, networking, and security.

Just a few years ago, there was talk of data center footprints actually shrinking due to virtualization, consolidation, and cloud services, meaning fewer roles for professionals managing and maintaining these sites. Now, with the need to power artificial intelligence workloads, data centers are swelling in size and volume, and with it, demand for data center professionals is growing too.

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Data center job postings have more than doubled over the past two years, even as overall US job postings declined approximately 12%, according to a July 2026 analysis from Indeed Hiring Lab: “Six in every 1,000 US job postings are now data…