The Data Center Frontier Executive Roundtable features insights from industry executives with lengthy experience in the data center industry. Here’s a look at the insights from Angie McMillin of Vertiv.
ANGIE McMILLIN, Vertiv
Angie McMillin is vice president and general manager, IT Systems at Vertiv. She leads global teams across the organization in developing and managing a portfolio of IT and infrastructure management solutions that meet the changing needs of the industry, including the Avocent, Cybex, Alber and Trellis product brands. Angie was recently named a top 10 finalist for the Edge Woman of the Year Award 2020.
Here’s the full text of Angie McMillin’s insights from our Executive Roundtable:
Data Center Frontier: More providers are targeting the hyperscale computing market, and more customers appear to be “graduating” to super-sized requirements. How is this market changing, and what are the keys to success in serving the hyperscale sector in 2020 and beyond?
Angie McMillin: We are definitely seeing growth in the hyperscale market and this sector does have some distinct characteristics that suppliers need to be prepared to support. Like other sectors they are very focused on cost and efficiency, but they are more willing to push the envelope through experimentation and innovation to achieve aggressive goals in these areas.
For the most part, they are innovation-driven organizations, and that is reflected in their approach to data center design and operation. To be successful, suppliers must exhibit a high degree of expertise and agility when supporting this market. The other thing that is important is being able to support their goal of achieving consistency in how data centers are designed and operated globally. Globally standardized solutions and global service capabilities have become more important as these organizations have continued to expand.
Data Center Frontier: Artificial intelligence is bringing more powerful chips into the data center. What’s your take on the present and future of rack density, and how it may influence data center equipment and design?
Angie McMillin:We see the potential for the convergence of two trends to drive growth in rack density in certain applications. One is the introduction of new technologies such as the chips mentioned in the question. The other is the migration of data center capacity closer to users to support private and hybrid cloud applications. These edge deployments will be located in areas where real estate is scarce and more expensive, so there will be an incentive to increase density.
We’re still in the early phases of these trends and what we are seeing today is clusters of high-density racks being integrated into existing data centers. These clusters will serve as proving grounds for the technologies that will enable more widespread deployment of higher density racks. Liquid cooling and hot-scalable power systems will be among the technologies that benefit from these trends.
“The pandemic is going to accelerate the move to lights-out data centers.”
Angie McMillin, Vertiv
Data Center Frontier: What do you see as the most important trends in data center connectivity and interconnection, and how have they been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic?
Angie McMillin: In the past six months, we’ve seen a surge in demand for remote IT management solutions such as KVMs and serial consoles that reduce physical interaction with data center systems. As we’ve seen in other areas of society, technologies adopted out of necessity that demonstrate their value can generate longer-term changes in how organizations operate.
In the data center, operators are becoming more comfortable with remote management and connectivity solutions and the pandemic could serve as the catalyst for accelerating the move to lights-out data centers.
Data Center Frontier: The COVID-19 pandemic is prompting companies to pursue automation to limit health risks. What are the most promising innovations the data center industry can adopt to meet the challenges posed by the pandemic?
Angie McMillin: As I mentioned previously, the pandemic is going to accelerate the move to lights-out data centers. One of the innovations we can expect as part of this evolution is increased integration between building management, data center infrastructure management and IT management systems. Enabling collaboration across these systems will enhance the value of each system and support the move to more predictive management that delivers better performance at lower cost.