Cooling trends and The Edge take center stage at Data Center World 2019

By Michael Zarrilli

Last month, our Data Center Solutions team had the opportunity to meet with professionals from around the globe at Data Center World in Phoenix. We encountered hundreds of visitors at the Johnson Controls booth, held insightful and informative sessions and had thoughtful conversations about today's key industry challenges.

In addition to participating in a successful presentation with Sharon Thomas on “How to Reduce Total Cost of Ownership and Drive Down PUE,” we were fortunate to meet with prospects, industry experts, and members of the media. While there is a lot to learn from Data Center World, the following were most noteworthy:

• “Free-Cooling” – It was clear that there is a broad interest in “free-cooling,” how it can be applied in data centers and how it can drive down PUE for data center providers. While “free-cooling” technologies like direct evaporative cooling have been utilized by cloud providers for years, as the technology matures, interest is growing with colocation and enterprise customers. Direct evaporative cooling is very reliable and can drive PUEs as low as 1.1. Additionally, these technologies are reducing their reliance on water through high media efficiency and new heat transfer technologies.
• Moving to the Edge – “The Edge” is a recent buzzworthy trend popping up in IT publications, but what does it really mean? Edge data centers are smaller facilities that extend the edge of the network to deliver cloud computing resources at faster speeds (as they have to travel shorter). The growing existence of new applications that require low latency are fueling the demand for Edge computing (e.g., video-streaming, autonomous vehicles). This shift to the edge will most likely be led by cloud and colocation data center providers, however, I don’t believe that the edge will replace the cloud, it will instead complement it for low latency applications.
• Growth, Growth and More Growth – Data centers continue to be built at a significant pace - >12% CAGR in North America. As built cycles become tighter and more complex, it is becoming critical for data center providers to partner with key infrastructure system OEMs to optimize building design and ensure on-time and on-budget data center builds.
• Security – Theft by intellectual property and private information is on the rise, so protecting data centers from insider security threats is a big focus in the industry. The use of proactive solutions such as unique wireless sensors can analyze data and create custom alerts of suspicious or unauthorized behavior.

If you missed us at the show, Johnson Controls demoed a number of new products including:

-YORK® Mission Critical Direct Evaporative Cooling (DEC) Air Handling Units (AHUs)
-The YORK® YVFA Free-cooling VSD Screw Chiller
- ANSUL Acoustic Nozzle
- INERGEN Fire Suppression System

Coming out of the show, we’re excited to see what the rest of 2019 has in store for the data center industry. If you are interested in learning more about our data center solutions, contact us today.