DATA CENTRE PREDICTIONS
DATA CENTRES
CURRENTLY
ACCOUNT FOR
AROUND 3% OF
THE WORLD’S
TOTAL POWER
CONSUMPTION.
THIS WILL
INCREASE AS
MORE FACILITIES
COME INTO USE.
Saving essential resources such as land,
water and materials throughout the data
centre life cycle is paramount to the
sector’s growth. Moreover, innovation
in power conversion and storage is
opening up new opportunities. Modular
power systems with single-module density
of 100kW/3 U, twice that of previous
industry standards, are reducing the
footprint and CAPEX of mission-critical
power infrastructure.
Effective cooling
Many of us in the region live in
warm climates. When we talk about
sustainability, it’s worthwhile to look
specifically at effective cooling. Largesized
data centres generate considerable
heat and usage of high-density ICT
infrastructure produces more heat per
rack. This trend will propel convergence
of liquid and air-cooling technologies
for effective and efficient cooling
leading to increased adoption of indirect
evaporative cooling. This is especially
important in a region that experiences hot
summers, such as the Middle East.
Scalable and futureproof
architecture
The average tech evolution cycle of
IT devices has been between three
to five years, whereas a data centre
infrastructure’s evolution cycle is 10 to 15
years. This demands a high degree of
flexibility of data centre facility to support
two to three evolution cycles of ICT
devices. Elasticity, flexibility, scalability
and time to deploy without burdening the
CAPEX is becoming a major ask.
We foresee a strong acceptance and
growth of prefabricated modular data
centre facilities which cut the construction
period in half and allows a high degree of
flexibility and scalability, thus leading to
better CAPEX management and improved
ROCE. This is becoming the mainstream
construction approach by telecom
carriers in the Middle East and elsewhere
when building hyperscale and mediumsized
data centres.
Full digitalisation and
AI-enablement
The Middle East’s evolution towards digital
infrastructure is accelerating, particularly
the rapid adoption of AI applications.
Data centres will benefit from this trend
as more digitalisation gets embedded
across the DC life cycle from planning and
construction to O&M, energy management
and resource optimisation. AI will be
widely applied throughout the data centre
facility to achieve efficiency and a higher
degree of autonomous operation and life
cycle management. ◊
20 Issue 17
www.intelligentdatacentres.com