Data centers are the critical link between the digital and physical world. They power almost every aspect of our economy today, consuming close to 3% of global electricity in the process. Increasing demands on data center infrastructure are being propelled by the shifts to the cloud, machine to machine communication, mobile technologies, VR/AR, AI, 5G and IoT.
As the world continues to innovate, data center builders and operators grapple with the question of how to navigate a myriad of facility design complexities – balancing 24 x 7 x 365 operations with growing power demands, elevated risks, and the urgent need to reduce the sector’s carbon emissions.
Elevated risks to critical power infrastructure
Covid-19 has highlighted our economy’s digital dependence, elevating risks and exposing harsh new realities.
An aging centralized power grid that is prone to outages and natural disasters, coupled with a dangerous cyber-threat landscape has left society heavily reliant on an electric delivery system that has simply not kept pace with the evolution of its surrounding environment.