FEATURE : DATA CENTRE SOLUTIONS
From sustainability and AI to the talent shortage – How today ’ s challenges will affect data centres of the future
Mark Yeeles , VP for Schneider Electric ’ s Secure Power Division UK and Ireland , shares his first impressions of the data centre industry and its key challenges including those in relation to sustainability and the energy crisis , increased demands for digitisation and how to attract and retain talent .
Data centres are the backbone of our digital lives . Yet as appetites for data , hosted applications and connectivity accelerate , so too do demands placed on the sector .
The industry itself faces a clear and prominent issue : as digital dependency and consumption proliferate , so does the need for more physical infrastructure . This , in turn , begs new questions such as how much growth the industry can expect to see and how much energy the data centre of the future will consume .
Without data centres , it ’ s clear the world would be a very different place . From general Internet use to streaming and social media , people interact with data centres hundreds of thousands of times per day without realising . So , with supply a direct result of market demand , one might question whether the industry ’ s sustainability problem is only the responsibility of those who are within it , or also those who are dependent on it .
The irony is that it ’ s both .
Closing the sustainability gap
Having recently joined the industry from the industrial automation sector , the first thing that struck me is the general lack of awareness about data centres within the digital landscape . By many accounts , data centres are estimated
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