AI, the number one topic in the tech industry right now, was broached at the Canalys Forum 2023 as a game-changing technology that will have ramifications and opportunities for everyone in the industry.
With 16% of the Top 3000 publicly quoted companies in the US mentioning AI in investor calls and many of them attributing a lot of their growth in 2022 to their AI projects, nobody wants to miss the new AI wave.
The Canalys Forums bring together experts in the IT channel to discuss the latest news, forecasts, and strategies. This year, Vertiv participated as a Gold Sponsor with Andrea Ferro, VP channel, IT, and edge applications for EMEA, and Jesper Hersbro, EMEA channel distribution director, as representatives in the Expert Hubs.
Andrea Ferro participated in the Expert Hub "AI meets the Cloud," where he highlighted the importance of AI as the next super application that will drive the public cloud. However, he emphasized that it will probably be deployed in a hybrid manner, with noticeable effects on the cloud and on-premise.
Hyperscalers and cloud providers are strategically positioned to address this increased demand for AI services with the help of high-density cooling and power solutions. Their scalable infrastructure and expertise make them ideal partners for organizations looking to harness the power of AI without the burden of managing complex on-premises solutions.
As a result, cloud service providers are well equipped not only to support this growth but also to play a vital role in democratizing AI, making it accessible to a wider range of customers and industries.
Vertiv Solutions for AI Trends
The industry is poised for a transformative response to AI. At Vertiv, we anticipate a widespread integration of AI technologies to enhance efficiency and innovation.
Ferro mentioned the changes we have seen in terms of equipment, more specifically, the addition of liquid cooling to support AI IT infrastructure. This comes as a solution to high-density computing applications that require more efficient thermal management solutions.
Liquid cooling leverages the higher thermal transfer properties of water or other fluids to support efficient and cost-effective cooling of high-density racks and can be up to 3000 times more effective than using only air cooling technologies. Moreover, liquid cooling allows heat waste recovery, which can be used to warm offices, homes, vertical farming, or other applications, supporting the circular economy. When used in combination with traditional air-cooling technology, liquid cooling at the server and rack provides an efficient addition to thermal management for high-density applications.
The same concerns surround power infrastructure in terms of renewable energy. High-density computing applications will inevitably require increased power consumption to keep up with AI demand, which will translate into rack power distribution units (PDUs) that will need to handle much higher capacity.
Ferro underlined that we could optimize energy consumption with the technology available today. He believes it can be used to handle dynamic energy response and interact with the grid, providing the opportunity to have dual usage of assets built for data center infrastructure.
A good next step towards smart power is dynamic grid support. Additionally, a grid interactive uninterruptible power supply (UPS) can lower overall energy costs by enabling users to commercialize the energy they store.
This is done through balancing services, which enable the power supply to align with the actual demand, supporting the stability of the grid and allowing for both revenue generation and energy savings.
What makes a UPS or other energy storage systems strong candidates for grid balancing is that backup batteries in a UPS only come into play should an outage occur, meaning these batteries spend much of their lifetime unused. By deploying dynamic grid balancing services, these batteries can be fully exploited to provide additional benefits and maximize return on investment (ROI).
AI and Sustainability
Sustainability was a key topic in the panel due to the growing amount of processing power that AI is demanding and how often it leads to increased resource consumption.
Ferro also weighed in on the importance of investing in more sustainable infrastructure:
“We need to think about how we can be smarter at handling power. We expect changes in terms of seeing more distributed power generation along with devices that are handling multiple energy sources. Renewable energy can be generated on-site, so there are a lot of opportunities to see increased investment in smart power infrastructure.”
There is a whole new innovation cycle that needs to be built around renewable energy to ensure that sustainable objectives can keep up with AI.
“With Vertiv being one of the global leaders in building infrastructure for data centers, we have dedicated teams that are looking at the carbon footprint of our products and the various scopes of emissions from our operations - not only for our company but also for our partners and customers. There’s definitely a huge focus to continuously invest in engineering and new technologies to increase the efficiency of power and cooling solutions. There are a lot of new technologies that will emerge.”
With the accelerating demand for high-performance computing and AI applications, it’s clear that AI is here to stay. As organizations adopt more cloud services, there’s a good chance your organization is making plans today to leverage the power of AI.
However, without a modern data center environment, AI hardware becomes challenging to deploy, difficult to scale, and risks significant performance degradation and operational reliability.
Read more about Vertiv’s participation in the Canalys Forum 2023 in our news section. For more information about Vertiv solutions for high-density and AI applications, contact your local sales representative.
