Data Center Frontier Trends Summit Keeps It Cool, Eyes AI, Turns Up Power
One of my miniscule regrets surrounding last week's magnificent Data Center Frontier Trends Summit in Reston, Virginia was a missed editorial opportunity to use more corny, too-on-the-nose cliches in opening remarks.
We need to keep it cool. We must carefully eye AI. We need to turn up the power. By the most sustainable means necessary, and that will certainly include lots of natural gas in the near term. Behind the meter and with new transmission lines, if and when you can get them; and throw in some SMR fields by 2030 on the permitted, expansive setbacks of an existing nuclear plant, right next to your solar and wind acreage and microgrid, etc.
To have said stuff like that would've been fun.
Or to have worked in some GenX movie references. Like how if this industry was 'Jaws', we're probably at the point in the film where Brody backs into the NOC and says, you're gonna need a bigger data center (but with fewer racks). Except here the shark's eyes are alive because the shark is AI; and it's not a predator, but the pilot fish.
Luckily my remarks kept it more cool. Goofy hyperbole pales in comparison to the abundant intelligence embodied by the superb speakership at DCF's inaugural live event as it washed over me in its frequent moments of warm, genuine candor, deep insights, and a couple of times, outright hilarity. I'm looking at the Duluth, Minnesota data center executive contingent of DF&I CEO Scott Bergs and DC Blox CTO/CDO Jeff Wabik, along with ark data centers CEO Brett Lindsey.
Some general advice to be gleaned editorially from the totality of the talks at the DCF Trends Summit really might be that the data center industry at this moment needs to keep things very cool and very smart, especially with regard to AI and sustainability, as it races to turn up the power -- however and wherever it can.
Whereby keeping it cool means what we know it means, but also connotes a need for the industry to act and grow responsibly at the triple intersection of DEI and ESG, on the road to net zero by 2050 (one can hope), in the face of the astounding power requirements for the coming world of AI-as-a-Utility and GPUs-as-a-Service.
As Critical Facility Group's Chris McLean observed on the event's keynote panel on power, cooling and chip considerations for the future of AI: the hockey stick on those charts is actually a rocketship. So well said -- and not just because of space data centers.
The remarks below are a slight expansion on my more utilitarian talk delivered for introduction and orientation at this year's inaugural Data Center Frontier Trends Summit. DCF will be sharing much more content from the event in upcoming days and weeks. To those of you who attended, thank you. To those who missed it, we hope to see you next year. -- MV
Is everyone ready? They'd better back up the coffee truck to this building, because this is going to be a marathon.
Hello and welcome to the Data Center Frontier Trends Summit. I'm Matt Vincent, Editor in Chief of Data Center Frontier.
Like our founder and founding editor Rich Miller wrote on LinkedIn shortly before we got here, this is going to be fun. We're so happy to have you all here and so happy to be here at this entirely full show. With people practically banging on the door to get in. I heard that people have been sharing badges. That's the demand in this industry.
Thanks again to Michael Whitlock and the team at Sabey Data Centers for the amazing tour, that was really special.
I'd be remiss if I didn't thank all of our sponsors, especially data center tour sponsor Johnson Controls and session sponsors Schneider Electric, Siemens, Legrand and BluePrint Supply Chain.
And our lunch, break and reception sponsors, Danfoss, the Green Building Initiative (GBI) and Corning. And our break and tabletop sponsors, FMS and ESI Fuel Management. Thank you all.
And we're going to need those breaks and refreshments because this is going to be fun, but it's also going to be a lot.
A lot of information delivered in really good panels with uniformly superb speakers and discussions and professional networking here today for you, just a stone's throw from Data Center Alley, the global epicenter of the world's most pivotal and incredibly growing industry.
That's what I tell them back at Endeavor Business Media. The data center industry simultaneously elevates and underpins basically every other industry, enterprise and government in the world. It's not a boast; just a fact.
And this industry, as everyone here knows, is now well on its way into a period of even more unprecedented growth -- you've heard that turn of phrase a lot this year -- and investment, based on the amazing boom in AI and gigawatt hyperscale campus and colocation facility development and construction.
As our founding editor Rich Miller has said, it's a time of big, fast change in the data center industry.
Data Center Frontier (DCF) has always been focused on the future of data centers, covering the dynamic and interrelated technology and business streams involved in developing these facilities and campuses where the internet and cloud computing and AI lives, from the substation down to the chip and the fluid that cools it.
And now this industry, which fuels nearly every other industry -- as it also drives global economies, societies and cultures, and government and scientific research -- is amid this time of big, fast change as it grapples with the AI and HPC/supercomputing inflection points.
The industry is of course also wrapping its heads around associated, massive oncoming energy demands, while seeking to balance this unprecedented growth - there's that adjective again - with an overwhelming need for green and sustainable operations and construction outcomes due to the present climate catastrophe, which we know with certainty is also escalating.
DCF has also always been about talking to and learning from the industry's most knowledgeable leaders, experts and influencers, as we keep an eye on what's coming and what's percolating at the edge of innovation for all industry stakeholders.
And what they should be thinking about along the journey of furnishing the internet, the cloud, AI, and the larger digital infrastructure's growth in response to epically escalating, oncoming demand.
And what I want you to remember going into the next few days is that by being here with us at this sold-out conference, you're not only "on" the frontier of data centers -- but you are the frontier of data centers.
Similarly, over the next few days in this hall you're going to hear from an amazing array of data center industry influencers on the stage -- but what I want you to remember is that, just by being here in this room, you really are also the industry's influencers.
Among the many surprising, wondrous, and confounding things you will learn this week is that, if you don't already know it, in petit counterpoint to the looming power Trilemma, about which you will also soon learn, the data center industry also has a minor PR problem.
And so with the knowledge that you are really still just a select few, we enjoin you to expand both your prospects and your ranks with us today in this business. Because as Rich often reminds me, the hallway conversations at events like this are frequently as engaging as the talks on the stage.
That being said, no one will outdo today's opening keynote panel, which has been curated and is being led by, really, the only person who could lead such a session, at this place and time: of course I speak of the unquestioned dean of Data Center Alley, Loudoun County Economic Development Executive Director, Buddy Rizer.
Matt Vincent
A B2B technology journalist and editor with more than two decades of experience, Matt Vincent is Editor in Chief of Data Center Frontier.
