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 Eric Jensen of Data Aire.
ERIC JENSEN, Data Aire
As General Manager/Vice President of Data Aire, Eric’s goal is to serve the project delivery process first and foremost. By understanding the drivers for each of the various stakeholders, Data Aire can help achieve customers’ goals. Eric seeks to build a strategic partnership vs. inserting the company’s products at a transactional level. In his role as National Sales Director for Data Aire’s parent company, Construction Specialties for 11 years, Eric improved key account development from 10-30% and was instrumental in reorganizing the sales and product management teams across multiple business units for a collaborate and scalable sales approach. Eric takes great pride in people development — nurturing a diverse team as they grow in their career.
Here’s the full text of Eric Jensen’s insights from our Executive Roundtable:
Data Center Frontier: Several hyperscale operators have indicated they expect to boost capital investment in digital infrastructure in coming years. What’s the outlook for hyperscale computing in 2021, and what will this mean for data center developers and service providers?
Eric Jensen: Demand for hyperscale deployments will continue to grow at the current pace or faster in the near term. However, 2022, is to some degree, in jeopardy. Money is as available as it’s ever been, yet there’s a distinct lack of resources – whether that’s the supply chain for both gear and ITE or labor. This means projects that don’t get delivered as hoped and there is uncertainty of the capital investment that goes along with that.
Data Center Frontier: Enterprise IT spending appears to be rebounding after subdued spending in 2020. What are the most important trends you’re seeing in enterprise demand, and how might they impact the data center business in 2022?
Eric Jensen: There is definitely a renewed focus on enterprise infrastructure as the pandemic stress has tested architectures. Now, enterprises are responding with refreshes to aged infrastructure. This is changing the densities of these spaces as some of the newer architectures are either moving on-premises or being duplicated on-premises. Another driver is the digital infrastructure to support the enterprise IT. The physical infrastructure must keep pace, leading to upgrades to modern communications needs with the facility BMS.
Data Center Frontier: Cooling is a hot topic, as data center operators seek to balance growing use of AI hardware with commitments on sustainability and water use. What do you expect will be the key themes in data center cooling in the next several years?
Eric Jensen: Nowadays water use is often isolated from other components of sustainability, and rightly so, because for too long is was missing from the conversation. For the practices to continue to improve, the dialogue needs to become more comprehensive rather than more focused. Designs are taking a more holistic and deeper approach to sustainability evaluations, and considering the embodied energy in the water and the embodied water in the power.
Sometimes, counterintuitively, the power generation for a site may consume more water than the site would consume for equivalent power savings achieved through an open-loop system. To dismiss this as taboo is to dismiss the fact-based engineering. Hybrid solutions, combining highly efficient and scalable DX systems with waterside (closed or open loop) or airside economization, can achieve unparalleled efficiency in a redundant and resilient setup -without the dangers posed by an all-in/all-or-nothing approach.
Data Center Frontier: What might increased adoption of “metaverse” virtual worlds mean for digital infrastructure and the data center industry?
Eric Jensen: The concept of meta verses exponentially grows the digital world by adding layers. Latency becomes even more precious, increasing demand at the edge, amongst telcos, but also for enterprises.