Friday, February 26, 2021

Powering the Digital Economy: The Data Center Reimagined

How can data center operators insulate themselves from the increasing risks posed by aging centralized power grids prone to outages and vulnerable to natural disasters? 

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.