Latest Themes at Data Center Conferences in 2024
Given AI, continuing cloud expansion, and more, the data center industry continues to grow at a rapid pace, driven by increasing demand for digital infrastructure and advancements in technology. At the forefront of 2024's data center conferences, several repeating themes have emerged, shaping the future communications, IT, and facilities.
The themes of sustainability, AI, edge computing, and cybersecurity continue to be featured in discussions, while innovations in cooling, growth, and infrastructure improvements are shaping the path forward. As the world becomes more connected and data-dependent, these conferences provide a vital platform for collaboration, innovation, and setting the direction for the next generation of digital infrastructure.
1. Sustainability and Green Data Centers
One of the most significant topics in 2024 continues to be the focus on sustainability. As global concerns about climate change intensify, data center operators are prioritizing energy efficiency and are aiming to reduce their carbon footprint even as they expand. The industry is actively exploring renewable energy sources, such as solar, wind power, and now geothermal, to reduce reliance on fossil fuels. The main data center, AI, and IT conferences have highlighted how cooling technologies, like liquid cooling, and energy-efficient hardware designs are becoming standard practice to reduce operational losses to curb power consumption.
Data centers are being designed to recycle waste heat where possible and utilize water-efficient cooling systems or use no water for cooling at all, as noted by many speakers. Discussions are also around carbon-neutral approaches using 3rd party verification and the use of green building materials in new construction.
2. Edge Computing and Decentralized Infrastructure
Edge computing remains another theme in 2024, with discussions iterating on those over the last ten years on how the proliferation of connected devices, such as IoT sensors and autonomous systems, are driving demand for decentralized data centers. This trend is slowly reshaping the traditional, centralized model, pushing data processing closer to the source of data generation for those that may need it. By reducing latency and bandwidth strain, edge data centers are enabling faster decision-making for applications like autonomous vehicles, smart cities, and others using the high speed and bandwidth of 5G networks.
Conferences are also delving into the business models and deployment strategies for edge computing, emphasizing modular and micro-data centers that can be rapidly deployed in various locations, such as more rural areas or urban centers for specific events or specialized needs.
3. AI for Data Center Management
Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are playing an increasingly prominent role in the operation and management of data centers. In 2024, AI-driven tools are being showcased heavily for optimizing power usage, predicting equipment failures, and managing capacity more effectively. This automation is helping to focus, not necessarily reduce, the need for human interaction, allowing data centers to operate with a more streamlined approach that helps remove the strain from facility managers and staff.
Another hot topic has been the use of AI in predictive maintenance. Although it’s been touted to analyze data from sensors embedded in equipment, AI systems can also anticipate failures from specific existing equipment without these extras by using historical data, minimizing downtime and improving operational efficiency. At the IT level, data centers are also leveraging AI to optimize workload distribution, making better use of available resources and minimizing energy consumption.
4. Hyperscale and Colocation Growth: AI needs stacked with Cloud Demand
The demand for hyperscale and colocation data centers is at an all-time high, again, in 2024, driven by continued cloud adoption, artificial intelligence workloads, and big data applications. Hyperscalers like AWS, Google Cloud, others are scaling their operations, leading to repetitious discussions on how to support this rapid expansion.
Conference speakers are still commenting on the designs and scalability strategies required to support these growing hyperscale environments. In parallel, colocation facilities are growing in importance as the hyperscale companies seek more IT infrastructure to support their need even as third-party providers also seek resilient, high-performance data centers. The conferences have lightly touched on how providers can improve connectivity and network resiliency to support multiple tenants and vast data demands, with specifics on designs and implementation yet to go beyond an NDA.
5. Cybersecurity and Data Sovereignty
With increasing threats to data security, cybersecurity has become a continued theme at data center conferences in 2024, with analogies using anything from Skynet to Minecraft. The industry is still focused on protecting sensitive data from breaches, but also about the sharing of user data. At the ground level, zero-trust security models, where no user or device inside or outside the network is trusted by default, and multi-factor authentication are still required to gain access to data and systems. Any mention of quantum security goes without a solution so far.
Data sovereignty concerns are also being discussed, particularly with European countries imposing stricter regulations on where data can be stored and processed. As more companies face compliance challenges, conference speakers have started addressing strategies for ensuring that data centers meet local data residency requirements without compromising security or performance.
6. Quantum Computing and Future-Ready Infrastructure
Quantum computing has entered the spotlight occasionally as a forward-looking theme this year. While quantum computing is not yet mainstream, the data center industry is preparing for another round of changes that will be required to support this technology. Conferences have sometimes mentioned how current data centers will need to adapt to accommodate quantum computing cooling, power, and processing needs, but all of the hype seems to be surrounding AI and taking the lessons learned to apply them for this next need when it becomes more mainstream.
Participants have asked about hybrid computing environments, where quantum computers might work in existing facilities, alongside other data center loads, possibly integrating to solve complex workloads faster. As with cybersecurity, the growing interest in quantum-safe cryptography and long-term data security in a quantum-enabled world has also come up, with brief answers.
7. Liquid Cooling and Advanced Thermal Management
With the increasing density of servers and computing power inside data centers, thermal management is just as important as ever. In 2024, liquid cooling solutions (rack, row, room) have gained more traction as a viable alternative to traditional air-cooling systems. Data center conferences have featured innovations in immersion cooling, with many new fluids and solutions coming online in the later few years.
The use of liquid cooling highlights not only reducing power consumption but also enabling the deployment of more powerful processors in a smaller footprint. These innovations are critical as AI workloads and high-performance computing (HPC) demand more from data center infrastructure. Overall, each of the immersion vendors has had their own sales pitch with few panel discussions or comparisons on approaches or solutions. This has been due to how each has reacted to reach metrics they believe customers care most about: kW/sqft; PUE improvement; retrofit opportunities; IT capabilities; etc.
8. 5G and Network Infrastructure
In a more tangential fashion, 5G continues to be mentioned at conferences in 2024, as speakers further explore the intersection of 5G and data centers, particularly the need for low-latency, high-bandwidth infrastructure. As 5G becomes ubiquitous, the demand for faster network infrastructure is growing rapidly. Sessions have been addressing how data centers are evolving to support the massive amounts of data generated by 5G applications, from streaming and gaming to smart factories and connected healthcare systems.
