E D I T O R ' S Q U E S T I O N

There will be an even greater need for more power for data centre racks . In 2023 , this increased need for power happened more quickly than expected due to the rapid rise of Generative AI and higher density deployments , as well as more power-hungry general computing ( CPUs ) coming into the market . Because rack density will only go up in 2024 , even more power will be needed . Data centre providers will need to leverage advanced cooling technologies and consider new design schemes to keep pace with nextgeneration technology .

That said , while interest in liquid cooling technologies will rise , short-term investments will be modest ( for now ). Air cooling has its limitations , particularly with high density deployments , yet still meets the cooling needs of many implementations . While the evolution to liquid cooling is certainly inevitable , rapid uptake may still be a few years out due to the upfront investment and complexities involved in deploying these solutions in current data centre infrastructures .

AI will positively impact data centre operations . In 2023 , organisations did a lot of experimenting , applying AI to different data sets . In 2024 , companies are going to become much more intentional about how they use AI to solve very specific business problems . In the data centre , providers will increasingly use AI solutions to improve operational efficiency and sustainability by monitoring and setting optimal thresholds for factors like temperature , humidity and overall general energy consumption . AI tools can also improve data centre providers ’ security posture – and the security posture of their customers – by more proactively alerting customers to

security events in the data centre or alerting the data centre NOC and / or SOC to issues relating to network congestion or a potential breach .

In 2023 , many organisations experienced the financial pain of having gone ‘ all-in ’ on the public cloud over the previous few years . Now they ’ re realising that they must get their arms around it and possibly make some changes , including migrating certain workloads to a private cloud or back to onpremises . Although , while we are seeing a move toward cloud recalibration , given the complexities , it will happen slower than initially expected . What we will see more of in 2024 is while public cloud will continue to grow , adoption will be more selective as organisations increasingly embrace hybrid solutions and cloud-like options , like Bare Metal-as-a-Service

( BmaaS ), that give them the flexibility and scalability they ’ re looking for in the public cloud with the cost predictability and control of a private offering .

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