Summary

Technology rarely, if ever, exists inside of a bubble. Emerging technologies seemingly always tend to have ripple effects outside of their intended purpose and often develop use cases across various (and unexpected) industries. In short, new technologies will always, inevitably, be developed; whether they become a help or a hindrance depends on whether our industry is ready for them.

Giving the data center industry that level of readiness, that ability to seize on the potential of whatever latest trends are coming around the corner, was precisely the purpose of AFCOM’s April webinar, all about 2023’s “State of the Data Center.” Based on the 7th annual whitepaper that he authored, webinar host Bill Kleyman provided an in-depth look at the latest trends that are poised to dominate the data center industry this year (and beyond), as well as “taking the temperature” on data center leaders’ current attitudes regarding ESG initiatives, potential security threats, and much more.

Despite all of the recent upheavals caused by the pandemic, supply chain shortages, and other unforeseen challenges, one trend remains the same: the demand for data is stronger than ever. “We are truly shifting into a new era of collaborating, communicating, and working with data,” Kleyman stated at the webinar’s start. “It’s become clear that we now live in a truly digital society.”

Indeed, Kleyman provided statistics that revealed we’ve gone from spending 27.3% of our total daily Internet time using our mobile phone to a whopping 53.5%—a nearly two-fold increase. These numbers alone show how dependent we as consumers have become on easy, immediate access to data—and also emphasizes just how much work needs to be done for data center leaders to facilitate this rising demand for data.

 

ChatGPT Dominates the Conversation

Likening today’s era to the year 1999, when the Internet was on the brink of dominating the world of tech (and the world itself), Kleyman illustrated just how quickly and ferociously ChatGPT has entered the cultural conversation. A recent study has shown that ChatGPT only took five days to reach one million users—an astonishing statistic when compared to Instagram, the previous tech trend to have the quickest adoption rate, which took a comparatively sluggish 2.5 months to reach a million users.

While seemingly not immediately relevant to the data center industry, Kleyman still urged ChatGPT’s importance and disruptive potential: “We have to be conscious about this,” he warned, “because this is fundamentally going to change the way we do things.” And the widespread adoption of ChatGPT, both within and without data centers, will nonetheless have a profound impact on the data center industry at large.

Compared to a simple Google search, which consumes roughly .3kWh of energy, a single ChatGPT session costs about 3-4kWh of energy—or, said another way, approximately 50-100 times more energy is required for ChatGPT when compared to your standard search engine. As such, the newfound strain on ChatGPT and other emerging technologies “is going to shift the way we deploy critical physical infrastructure,” according to Kleyman. “The cost to train these models – and believe me, there’s more and more of them – are already causing major cloud providers to run out of space.”

Or, as the IEEE has declared: “The cost of improvement is becoming unsustainable.”

 

Security Tops the List

When Kleyman surveyed data center leaders for this year’s “State of the Data Center” whitepaper regarding which DCIM initiatives they’ve implemented (or plan to implement) in 2023, he was surprised to discover that security topped the list for the first time since the start of this annual whitepaper. In part, Kleyman said, this is due to data center operators increasingly finding ways to integrate security with infrastructure management, but may also be due to newfound primary threats to infrastructure itself.

For the first time ever, when data center operators were asked to rank the greatest threats to their data centers’ primary security and infrastructure, both “Outside Threats (Human)” (39%) and “Inside Threats (Human)” (36%) made the top five list of the greatest threats overall, alongside ransomware (52%), loss of PII (39%), and DDoS attacks (36%).

Overall, according to Kleyman, these results provide a clear message: data center leaders are becoming increasingly worried about people maliciously or accidentally damaging a data center—whether they’re inside or outside of a facility. According to a recent interview Kleyman conducted with an FBI agent, the government has also started to take notice of these newfound threats to data centers, concluding that any concentration of critical infrastructure within a data center could be—and, chances are, will be—perceived as a potential target for an attack.

“We don’t talk about physical security enough,” Kleyman concluded. “It’s important to have that conversation about ways to improve your facility’s security — whether that’s exterior fences, or AI, or something else.”

 

Making Sustainability...Sustainable

Fortunately, data center operators are continuing to discover ways to implement renewable energy and decrease water usage in order to achieve their sustainability initiatives and ensure they aren’t creating a strain on resources for their local communities.

Overall, 57% of respondents either currently deploy renewable energy, have initiatives to do so, or are actively looking into better ways to implement renewable energy. Similarly, 58% of respondents are either implementing, planning to implement, or looking to implement critical initiatives to reduce their total water usage.

Sources of renewable energy are also gaining traction year after year. The whitepaper’s results aren’t particularly unexpected—solar (55%), wind (36%), and hydro (27%) continue to win the popularity contest—but the most surprising result, at least according to Kleyman, is that 10% of respondents have indicated they plan to look at implementing nuclear power in the near future.

“Now, I don’t think this was planned on purpose that [today’s webinar] is the same day as the anniversary of Chernobyl,” Kleyman joked, “but as someone who lived there and survived it, I’m still a big fan of nuclear power.” Kleyman cited recent breakthroughs and optimizations in small modular reactors (SMRs) as a potential reason for this unexpected gain in traction, and reassured the audience that the recent switch from graphite-based to water-based nuclear reactors means that they’ve become a lot safer and “a lot cooler to deploy.”

 

Conclusion

There’s so much more that Kleyman discussed in April’s “State of the Data Center” webinar that I wasn’t able to include in this recap—and, as Kleyman himself admits, there’s so much more in the “State of the Data Center” whitepaper that he wasn’t able to include in his webinar. 

 

For access to a full recording of April’s webinar, click here. You’re also welcome to download and peruse Kleyman’s presentation by clicking here. Finally, feel free to read the full results and expert insights provided within the actual “State of the Data Center” whitepaper by clicking here.