Executive Insights: Thomas Doherty of Aligned

THOMAS DOHERTY, Aligned Data Centers

As Chief Operating Officer of Aligned Data Centers, Tom draws on over 35 years experience in real estate, design and construction to provide day-to-day leadership and to drive excellence in the clients’ experience. Tom’s unique ability to help others and businesses accomplishes their goals is evident in his commitment to the clients’ and his team’s success.

Prior to Aligned Data Centers, Tom co-founded the Washington, DC division of WB Engineers+Consultants, where he quickly built a multi-million dollar revenue-generating operation. Prior to WB, Tom held executive positions at Verizon where he managed the planning, design, construction, and operations of the FiOs and Global Networks, Verizon World Headquarters, 9/11 recovery management and portfolio rationalization. His extensive career at Verizon spanned over 24 years, working through the real estate change management of five separate mergers.

Here’s the full text of Thomas Doherty’s insights from our Executive Roundtable for the second quarter of 2016:

Data Center Frontier: In the first half of 2016 we’ve seen unusually strong demand for wholesale data center space from cloud builders and Internet enterprises. Is this a short-term phenomenon, or is cloud growth fueling a long-term shift toward larger requirements?

Thomas Doherty: Cloud demand is here to stay. As the portfolio of enterprise data center facilities are challenged by higher densities and legacy systems unable to meet the variable storage and computer demands of today’s IT demands, we expect moving to the cloud will continue to be a growing, viable solution for businesses. Opportunities to reduce cost of ownership through a utility model for storage and compute, while substantial research efforts well underway to address security concerns and every increasing need for data center capacity bode well for continued movement to the cloud.

• Government spending $7.4B on cloud and saved over $5.5B
• International Data Group (IDG) reports:
  • 48% of enterprises are moving to the cloud to replace on-premise, legacy technology today
  • 46% are adopting cloud applications and platforms due to their speed of deployment
  • 43% are focusing on lower total cost of ownership (TCO). 50% of mid-market organizations are adopting the cloud to gain business continuity

• Corp Technology reports:
  • Productivity improvements
    • 70% of businesses report that they’ve been able to reinvest funds back into their business as a result of moving to the cloud
    • 59% of SMBs using cloud services report significant productivity benefits
  • Security concerns: 94% of SMBs have experienced security benefits in the cloud that they didn’t have with their on-premises service

We don’t see this trend slowing anytime soon. Cloud growth is shifting the industry and is here to stay.

Data Center Frontier: A growing number of data center providers are embracing renewable energy. Is it becoming easier to procure renewables at a scale and price that makes sense for data centers? Which approaches hold the most promise?

Thomas Doherty: With all of our utility agreements, we have provisions to offer renewable energy with assignable renewable energy credits (REC’s). As our customers look for ways to meet their corporate environmental stewardship, we are pleased to support these commitments. In addition, reducing energy consumption through the most efficient electrical and mechanical systems in the industry enables our customers to reduce their carbon impact. Edison Award winning, patented Inertech systems, a subsidiary of Aligned Energy, enables Aligned Data Centers to offer a guaranteed PUE of less than 1.15.

The Aligned Data Centers facility in Phoenix, which is under development. The company also has a data center in Plano, Texas. (Image: Aligned)

Data Center Frontier: In recent years, the data center industry has made solid progress on energy efficiency. What are the most promising opportunities and strategies for continued improvement?

Thomas Doherty: Rising energy costs and growing data center energy demands increase the importance of effective data center efficiency. From day one, Aligned Energy was architected to measure and monitor to deliver data centers in the most efficient manner possible. Our company is comprised of a platform of companies centered around reducing energy and operating on a more proficient level.

Gartner has done an exceptional job improving the way we measure data center energy efficiency with the recently developed metrics, Idle Energy (IE) and Computational Energy (CE). These metrics provide a simple and unique method to effectively measure, track, compare and improve data center facility and IT equipment energy efficiencies and have been widely adopted by the industry. Until now, only the most prominent form of measurement was Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE), a measure of how efficiently a computer data center uses energy; specifically, how much energy is used by the computing equipment.

Large improvements in data center energy efficiency have come about through developing data centers in areas with climatological advantages enabling use of free cooling. However, with increasing latency requirements, there will continue to be increased demand for data centers in areas that don’t afford these advantages or with densities that limit the feasibility of these systems from an engineering and financial perspective. Aligned Energy’s Inertech systems affords our customers with the ability to gain free cooling efficiencies in the most demanding climates across the global. This performance, coupled with an 85% reduction is water usage, enables our customers to dramatically reduce operating expenses in the most demanding environments. For example, the “conductive cooling,” which utilizes continuous-flow heat sinks that remove heat directly at the rack or aisle and transports it away via a thermal bus has enabled us to operate with PUEs of 1.15 or less. This contrasts with conventional cooling systems that remove the massive amounts of heat produced in the data center by drawing in huge quantities of outside air and then running large compressors and fans to generate cold air.[clickToTweet tweet=”Thomas Doherty: Cloud growth is shifting the data center industry, and is here to stay.” quote=”Thomas Doherty: Cloud growth is shifting the data center industry, and is here to stay.”]

Also, by enabling tenants to control their power consumption, we can save energy from overprovisioning, which can result in an organization using only 50 to 60 percent of the power charged. Aligned Energy has set a course to achieve a dramatic impact on energy and water use in the world’s most energy-intensive vertical market through the development of our “pay-for-only-the-power-that-you-use” business model. The model was first introduced at the November 2015 opening of Aligned’s inaugural ultra-efficient, next generation data center in Plano, Texas.

Data Center Frontier: New technologies like the Internet of Things, virtual reality and artificial intelligence are generating excitement in the technology world. What are the implications of these new technologies for the data center sector?

Thomas Doherty: As a result of the evolution of the Internet of Things, virtual reality and artificial intelligence, demand for data center capacity is rising exponentially. (Literally – 90% of the data that exists in the world today was created in just the last two years, according to IBM.)

U.S. data centers are on track to consume roughly 140 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity annually by 2020, according to a report by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). There’s good reason for rising energy consumption: data centers are doing more.