EARTHED TECH

Vertiv Frontiers looks at the macro forces and technology trends shaping the future of the data center industry.

Proud to have finally published the Vertiv Frontiers report which looks at four macro forces and five key technology trends informing the future of the data center.

These range from Extreme densification, and Gigawatt scaling to Powering up for AI and Adaptive resilient liquid cooling:

After two decades of steady evolution – when cloud computing reshaped location and scale but core infrastructure remained largely constant – the next wave of transformation is accelerating at unprecedented speed.

Driven by AI and accelerated compute, this new era is redefining how digital infrastructure is designed, deployed, and scaled. The pace of change is unmatched, creating new possibilities to push the frontiers of innovation.

Vertiv Frontiers offers a lens on the future – an exploration of macro forces and the technology trends reshaping digital infrastructure.

It brings together the expertise of Vertiv specialists across power, thermal, IT systems, prefabricated modular infrastructure, advanced services, and AI infrastructure, reinforcing Vertiv’s position as a leading voice guiding the future of critical digital infrastructure.

The report was published with close cooperation from Vertiv’s chief technology and product officer Scott Armul, as well as other internal thought leaders such as Martin Olsen, Peter Panfil and Steve Madera.

Thanks to all of the other contributors from the Creative, Content and Web teams who helped to get this published.

The full report is available at Vertiv.com

Excerpt from Vertiv Must-Read Research Blog

Some fundamental truths cut through.

“It’s the economy, stupid”, did so for presidential hopeful Bill Clinton in the early 1990s. The phrase, and the strategy behind it, allegedly helped the Democratic candidate become US president. Focusing on the economy, while painting opponent George H.W. Bush as out of touch, sealed the deal with US voters.

The upshot? Prioritizing economics is always a sensible strategy. Unless perhaps that is you happen to be a hyperscale data center operator in the mid-2020s. Some might argue that short term economics have been deprioritized in the current AI arms-race.

Billions are being spent on new capacity by large operators, and LLM owners, who believe that almost no price is too high to pay right now to achieve future AI supremacy. According to the Financial Times, spending on data centers will jump from $333bn in 2024 to about $1trn in 2030. More than 80 percent of that investment will go into AI-related infrastructure.

But that level of AI investment is not representative of the totality of data center owners and operators. For the vast majority, made up of smaller enterprise owned facilities, shorter term economics and cost control is still a key consideration.

For more go to Vertiv.com

Excerpt from Vertiv Must-Read Research Blog

Disruptive technologies, by their very nature, are intended to upend the existing status quo.

Digital cameras have usurped traditional film and electric vehicles will eventually do the same to the combustion engine.

However, while change may be inevitable, invariably it is not pretty: often the disrupted party refuses to go quietly. The intangible future collides with the very tangible present and the status quo usually likes to do some disrupting back.

Take ridesharing apps for example. The mission of ridesharing companies is to revolutionize urban transport for the betterment of all – unless, that is, if you happen to be deeply invested in the existing taxi industry, for example.

True, a lot of headway has been made, but ridesharing app companies have also faced a lot of roadblocks – both figuratively and literally. From demonstrations of aggrieved taxi-drivers, to outright bans in some cities. Plans to create a virtual workforce of self-employed drivers have also come face-to-face with the realities of employment law.

More more go to Vertiv.com

Excerpt from Vertiv Must-Read Research blog

The dictionary definition of resilience is: ‘the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness’.

When it comes to current real-life examples of resilience, we should probably look no further than front-line health workers, teachers, or anyone else who has stoically provided vital services amidst the pandemic.

Pre-pandemic however, we might have turned to a more obvious example of toughness: a boxer perhaps. And if you’re looking for a pugilist to illustrate a point, then there is no better example than Muhammad Ali.

One of Ali’s most famous fights was the so-called ‘Rumble in the Jungle’, in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) in 1974. Sometimes referred to as ‘arguably the greatest sporting event of the 20^thCentury’, a 32-year-old Ali found himself up against a younger and stronger world champion – 25-year-old George Foreman. Despite his fame and experience, Ali was the 4-1 underdog going into the match.

Float Like a Butterfly

As the story goes, in the run-up to the fight, Ali reinforced the preconception that he would use his famous agility – “float like a butterfly, sting like a bee” – to ‘dance’ around the slower, but stronger, Foreman. But the reality on the day was quite different. Rather than avoid Foreman, Ali seemingly allowed himself to get cornered. Not only that, but he often leant back into the ropes and let his body, but also crucially the ropes, soak-up the punishment. The result? Foreman eventually tired himself out and Ali won the fight. The ‘rope-a-dope’, as it has become known, proved decisive.

For more go to Vertiv.com

My new role at Vertiv has kept me busy – in an exciting way – over the last couple of months so I’ve been a bit remiss in keeping this blog up to date.

However, events last week deserve a special mention.

Vertiv held its first Innovation Summit in Zagreb, Croatia on 16th and 17th April. The event had a regional focus with more than 300 delegates from across Central and Southern Europe from Croatia to Israel.

The central theme of the event was edge compute.

If that term sends a small shudder down your spine – it shouldn’t do. Edge is an important trend but it has also attracted a lot of hype which has at times outpaced technical clarity on what edge actually means in practice.

As Vertiv EMEA president Giordano Albertazzi puts it succinctly in this LinkedIn post, there is something of an edge knowledge gap out there between how some suppliers are using the term and  how end-users understand ‘the edge’.

“…one of the questions raised during a round table with journalists was about whether edge is really a new phenomenon or simply a re-branding exercise for existing branch office computing or content distribution networks?

I can understand that view, but I think edge as it is being defined now is most definitely something new and on a different scale to anything that we have seen before.

True, we have infrastructure – such as our range of prefabricated modular data centres manufactured outside of Zagreb – which predate the current focus on edge. But we are also already seeing demand for those systems in a range of new edge deployments.

So while there is certainly a ‘legacy edge’, there will also be a large number of clearly distinct and disruptive use cases which we believe will proliferate well beyond any pre-existing notions of edge.”

Vertiv is doing its bit to bridge the knowledge gap with an ongoing research project to put more meat on the bones of edge including defining a series of edge uses cases and archetypes.

The full edge research report is available from the Vertiv website.  

It’s great to be able to finally reveal that I have joined Vertiv as director of influencer marketing*, EMEA. 

It’s a bit of shift from being an analyst and journalist for the last 20 years but hopefully a rewarding change.

I’m really looking forward to supporting a team after years spent in the commentary box. 

And Vertiv is a great company to be working with right now as it moves into the next phase of its standalone journey: combining a start-up ethos with a great heritage and reputation. 

*If you want to know more about influencer marketing in business to business – this white paper is a good start. 

My latest and last (see below) Critical Thinking column over at Data Center Knowledge is on Norway’s bid to build up its data center industry.

To that end the Norwegian government recently published Powered by Nature: Norway as a Data Center Nation, a report that details the country’s credentials as an ideal data center location.

Coincidentally, I recently returned from my second trip to Norway, where I witnessed first-hand some of the things it has to offer data center operators.

First the positives: One that springs immediately to mind is the temperature. After visiting in February, I can report that Norway is indeed a great place for free cooling (the only thing that is free in Norway it seems). The temperature where I was, in Bergen, barely rose above 5°C (40°F), and it’s one of the warmer parts of the country, thanks to the Gulf Stream.

Norway also does have some established data center operators already, such as Green Mountain, Digiplex, and Basefarm. One of the most recent projects is also the most interesting: the Lefdal Mine Datacentre (which we have written about before) has ambitions to be the largest facility in Europe, and, as the name suggests, it is completely underground.

So given all that, why hasn’t Norway been able to attract a hyper-scale operator to date? Head over to Data Center Knowledge to read the full column.

NOTE: As mentioned above, this was my last column for Data Center Knowledge as I’ve got an exciting new role which I will be discussing soon. 

Big thanks to Yevgeniy Sverdlik and the team for allowing me to contribute to the great editorial over at Data Center Knowledge. I look forward to continuing to work with them in my new role. 

Ok. The headline is a little extreme but it has some basis in truth.

This week I spoke with Litbit co-founder JP Balajadia whose company is developing AI personas to help with the management of critical infrastructure including datacenters.

Specifically we spoke about the deal the AI-start-up has done with CBRE.

The facilities management specialist is licensing Litbit’s AI  ‘persona’ technology to help it improve the management services it provides to datacenter customers.

The deal is still at an early stage and we didn’t discuss too much in the way of specifics but it will be interested to keep tabs on how it all progresses.

In particular, I’d like to know how many of CBRE’s 600 to 800 datacenter customers will sign up to the initiative and what the data privacy and security implications might be.

The other big challenge is how, and from where, Litbit and CBRE are going to pull data into the system to train the AI persona which will be known as REMI.

We did touch on it during our conversation – it will be text based initially – but the specifics of what the user interface for the REMI persona will be like will also be interesting to see.

For the full article go to Data Center Knowledge.

I’ve also written before about the wider challenges of using AI in datacenter management.