Executive Insights: Kristen Kroll-Moen of Chatsworth Products

KRISTEN KROLL-MOEN, Chatsworth Products

Kristen Kroll-Moen, Senior Director of Global Marketing for Chatsworth Products (CPI), has spent nearly 20 years of her career with CPI, most recently leading the organization’s digital transformation efforts and driving its internal and external global communications programs. Her focus is on emerging technologies, innovation and building market prominence. Her team sets the strategic direction for CPI’s global communications programs, including the development and oversight of CPI thought leadership, content marketing, social media, sales enablement and partner programs.

Here’s the full text of Kristen Kroll-Moen’s insights from our Executive Roundtable:

Data Center Frontier: As digital transformation gains momentum, enterprises are managing more data in more places. How will the explosive growth of data (“data gravity”) impact the growth and geography of digital infrastructure in 2020?

Kristen Kroll-Moen: Digital transformation is pushing a much larger influx of data into the network, and this data needs to be processed instantly to enable new demands – be it in artificial intelligence, machine-to-machine learning or real-time analytics.

In this scenario, the key decisions are what data to keep, where to process it, whether to store it and for how long. In this reality, organizations must be capable of deploying their IT strategy through hybrid infrastructure and have a plan for what type of data should be processed and where it should be stored – enterprise data centers, cloud, edge locations or on-premise locations.

Data Center Frontier: There’s a lot of buzz about 5G wireless. What is the likely impact of the 5G rollout on the data center industry, and when will we see it begin to drive meaningful growth?

Kristen Kroll-Moen: The carriers are already deploying compute infrastructure to support fifth-generation wireless technology, and those are edge data centers in some instances. Additionally, carriers are already planning on 5G for mobile devices. This will result in increased streaming and mobile transactions, which will drive data center growth at all levels.

Remember that 5G has a much higher frequency wavelength, so the signal is more easily disrupted. Imagine what it would take to provide 5G signal to large venues (stadiums, arenas, racetracks), distributed campus environments, smart cities – all the way to remote, connected farms or even oceanside. This will drive meaningful growth in the quantity and geo-location of the critical infrastructure to enable next-generation applications, highlighting the need to identify how to best deliver and secure IT equipment.

Data center cabinets from Chatsworth Products (CPI). (Photo: CPI)

Data Center Frontier: Last year several studies indicated that rack density level is increasing. How might the growing use of artificial intelligence and edge computing impact rack density and the world of data center cooling?

Kristen Kroll-Moen:  As rack density increases, airflow management becomes critical in traditional air-cooled facilities. In the late 2000s, the industry was projecting significant rack density increases. CPI conducted lab tests to observe and verify performance of airflow management technology and we discovered that air cools very dense racks, up to 30 kW, with disciplined airflow management. Since then, there have been more hardware improvements: hard drives have transitioned to solid state, power supplies have increased in efficiency, and equipment operating ranges have widened.

These improvements provide even more opportunity to accommodate new computing with traditional airflow cooling models. Where space is limited, perhaps in edge sites or where there is a high-density compute node, an alternative is to shift to liquid cooling, either supplemental indirect cooling, or direct liquid cooling. The challenge for enterprise operators is the availability of off-shelf direct liquid cooled solutions.

Data Center Frontier: The data center industry is finally talking more about its diversity problem. How does this translate into real-world improvement in the representation of women in the industry? What are the concrete steps that can bring change?

Kristen Kroll-Moen:  Change starts early. Teachers and counselors can have a huge impact on helping motivate and inspire today’s generation to pursue more STEM, computer science and engineering programs. And although some technology programs are starting to build their own curricula, data center roles have not been as well-defined as other STEM areas of focus in most schools, colleges and universities, so it will take some time before this career path gains more attention.

But technology industry leaders have an equally important role to play as well. That means motivating our own organizations and people to consider and explore varied skills sets in recruiting to balance and grow the workforce, with more access and exposure to on-the-job training, knowledge transfer, mentoring and cross-functional support. We all have such a critical stake in recruiting to create greater diversity, innovation and leadership.

As a marketer specifically, I’m passionate about the need to promote and create more awareness for not just those in our collective industries, but the general consumer who might not yet realize the impact and opportunities that data centers afford us now and will for many, many years to come.