RECAP | ROUNDTABLE - Looking forward to 2021

This Roundtable was scheduled to Look Forward to 2021 and beyond – 2020 was a year that will go down in history, and often those produce changes to society and technology that reverberate through the generations.

All those that registered for this Roundtable were contacted prior to the event with the latest Intelligence Report: “Five Datacenter Trends for 2021”, and from this, and 2 other reports published this year, (The gathering storm: Climate change and data center resiliency and Post-Pandemic Data Center Planning) we selected to focus on the following:

• AI & Remote Monitoring – will there be an increased use?
• Energy Efficiency & Sustainability – will this begin to feature more on the plans for new designs and in considerations for procurements?
• Pandemic Planning – is there more interest from local & national governments and other interest groups in the Data Center Industry?

Naveed Saeed, Senior Consultant – Uptime Institute, joined this call and started off the discussion by noting that any datacenter built in the last 25 years will already have a degree of remote monitoring implemented, and indeed he sees Automation also being used widely in the context of load management and take-overs if failures occur. Where he is beginning to see an increase is the use of Automation to help with the handover process between shifts of engineers, a task that previously involved physical contact not allowed during the pandemic.

Regarding Artificial Intelligence – that is not seen widespread yet, but he has spoken to Amazon where they are beginning to use it to optimize their energy efficiency and capacity by studying weather patterns and shifting IT Loads in accordance between their sites.
Widening out the discussion to the group, the overriding comment was that AI certainly was not something that had been looked into yet at their organizations, currently the focus is on improving with the systems they have. There was also a comment that as a whole the industry is still not focusing on the IT data involved in AI – but they can see this approaching on the horizon. This viewpoint was supported by Andy Lawrence – Executive Director, Uptime Institute Intelligence, who also joined the call. He confirms that from research and discussions around the industry, AI is a long way off from being used in any way large scale. Where it is starting to be used is within products & services – for example Schneider, with approval from the customer, will gather usage date from their equipment to improve their service offering. It was noted by a member that AI could be very useful in Predictive Maintenance, and indeed that they had noted products offering this, but not of a quality yet that they would implement.

This discussion was closed off with a suggestion from Naveed that in order for the AI software to be truly useful to the Datacenter Industry, it could be beneficial for the larger owner/operators to come together to outline their requirements for the future.

Moving onto Energy Efficiency and Sustainability, Naveed conceded that while it is a hot topic globally, it is not easy for Datacenters to move away from traditional Diesel Generators. He is aware that Gas Engine Generators are becoming available and used at some sites, but they come with the issues around on-site storage of gas. Andy noted that some of the larger Operators, Equinix and Microsoft, for example, are beginning to use Fuel Cells at some of their sites. However due to the time it takes them to start up they should not currently be used in conjunction with mains power.

The view from the members on the call was similar to AI – aware it is something that will come, but at the moment it is not a main concern. One member commented that their organizations decisions are guided by their own customers. At this point customers main concerns remains reliability and cost, but certainly if they did start to request it it would be taken into consideration more.
Andy’s closing comment to those on the call for this was that the future for how to improve the situation will be for the Datacenter Operators to look increasingly harder at the energy they buy from the grid. There are many “Green” certificates being issued that do not make any difference, but if the Datacenter Operators, with the volumes of power they buy, used those with true sustainability credentials it will force a change.

And finally the discussion moved to how this pandemic has focused attention from those outside the industry to the importance to the Global Digital Economy, and indeed to just the comfort of every day lives, that those working for Datacenters are. A member on the call confirmed that while within their home country of Australia workers had been classed as essential, this was not the case in many countries in Asia, and this had caused problems with staffing their facilities there, especially taking into considerations the strictness of lockdown measures in some of the areas. One member from Europe confirmed that while many governments in Europe had classed their workers as essential, the situation had highlighted that their remains a fundamental lack of understanding regarding the Data Center industry with those in a governmental decision making capacity, and that this is a real change that needs to happen in the future.