Audio Library

What to do when delivery volumes shrink and prices climb? Oskar Lampe, Regional Director at BCS Consultancy, discusses how supply chain disruption, material shortages and rising costs are creating new challenges for data centre construction projects.

REMI delivers renewable energy portfolio optimisation Albert Hofeldt, Chief Product and Technology Officer at Power Factors, discusses the launch of Unity REMI: Renewable Energy Management Intelligence. REMI is the purpose-built intelligence engine that understands the full operational and financial context of every asset in a renewable energy portfolio — and acts on it. REMI’s embedded intelligence engine introduces agentic optimisation to renewable energy portfolios, creating a force multiplier for the teams that manage them. Trained on operational data from more than 310 GW of renewable energy assets globally, REMI’s transparent, traceable intelligence understands every asset, hardware configuration, calculation, and optimisation scenario in the renewables industry.

Hybrid world promises true PUE Peter Griffiths, Founder and Chairman of Argyll Data Development, argues that the energy efficiency debate should move beyond making existing data centres marginally more efficient and focus instead on how AI infrastructure is built in the first place.

Grid-to-chip approach helps improve data centre performance and sustainability Nicolas Champagne, Global Market Manager of batteries and data centres at Arkema, highlights the importance of the raw materials and solutions designed to meet the challenges of high-power density, continuous operation, thermal constraints, and safety requirements, as data centre construction grows at an unprecedented rate to support the increased computing demands of AI.

Space-based data centres to complement terrestrial compute infrastructure Andrew Batson, Global Head of Data Center Research at JLL, discussed what needs to happen for space-based data centers to scale, what milestones matter most, and how energy constraints are reshaping digital infrastructure on Earth.

AI continues to shape data centre design and operations innovation - Part 3: Future & innovation Stefano Mozzato Vice President of Marketing, EMEA, discusses the findings of the Vertiv Frontier report, which details the technology trends driving current and future innovation, from powering up for AI, to digital twins, to adaptive liquid cooling. Stefano explains how data innovation continues to be shaped by macro forces and technology trends related to AI, with cross-technology forces, including extreme densification, driving transformative trends such as higher voltage DC power architectures and advanced liquid cooling, alongside on-site energy generation and digital twin technology.

AI continues to shape data centre design and operations innovation - Part 2: Energy & infrastructure Stefano Mozzato Vice President of Marketing, EMEA, discusses the findings of the Vertiv Frontier report, which details the technology trends driving current and future innovation, from powering up for AI, to digital twins, to adaptive liquid cooling. Stefano explains how data innovation continues to be shaped by macro forces and technology trends related to AI, with cross-technology forces, including extreme densification, driving transformative trends such as higher voltage DC power architectures and advanced liquid cooling, alongside on-site energy generation and digital twin technology.

AI continues to shape data centre design and operations innovation - Part 1: AI impact Stefano Mozzato Vice President of Marketing, EMEA, discusses the findings of the Vertiv Frontier report, which details the technology trends driving current and future innovation, from powering up for AI, to digital twins, to adaptive liquid cooling. Stefano explains how data innovation continues to be shaped by macro forces and technology trends related to AI, with cross-technology forces, including extreme densification, driving transformative trends such as higher voltage DC power architectures and advanced liquid cooling, alongside on-site energy generation and digital twin technology.

High AI adoption, but limited readiness across Asia Chris Street, Group Chief Revenue Officer of ST Telemedia Global Data Centres, discusses the findings of a new regional research study, Mind the Gap: Bridging the AI Infrastructure Readiness Divide, examining how organisations across Asia are progressing from AI ambition to execution. Commissioned by STT GDC with research partner Ecosystm, the study reveals that AI ambition across Asia is high, with nearly 90% of organisations having embarked on their AI journeys. However, a significant 71% remain in the "Builder" stage of maturity, where initial AI pilots struggle to scale into production environments capable of delivering consistent and measurable return on investment (ROI).

Micromanaging data centre infrastructure brings maximum rewards Mike Slevin, Director of EMEA market at Fluke Corporation, explains how, as AI demand accelerates, new research from the company reveals a growing confidence crisis among data centre professionals, raising concerns about the sector’s ability to scale reliably. 22% fully trust that their test and measurement data reflects real-world operating conditions - confidence drops further under pressure, with just 19% expressing full trust in data accuracy during peak load or failure scenarios. Mike discusses what needs to be done, with regular maintenance and better monitoring seen as critical to reducing downtime.

Platform play delivers thermal management expertise across the data centre ecosystem Peter Huang, Global President of Thermal Management & Data Centre at Castrol, discusses the rising importance of liquid cooling to meet the growing demands of AI, ML, and edge computing, explaining how bp Castrol is positioning itself as a thermal management specialist, building a global, end-to-end liquid cooling platform for the data centre industry. Peter shares the company’s “Forward” vision to become the leading liquid cooling orchestrator and partner-of-choice for global partners and customers.

North-East ideally placed to deliver digital infrastructure for an AI-fuelled digital future - Part 2 Following on from our highly successful North-East data centre roadshow, which took place in Newcastle earlier this year, we keep the region’s data centre conversation going, as Mike Hoy, CTO at Pulsant, Zac Potts, Technical Director, Sudlows and Matt Evans, CEO at Apx Data Centre Solutions, discuss the challenges and opportunities of developing the infrastructure required to deliver the data centres and associated digital infrastructure required to realise the North East AI Growth Zone’s full potential. All three are overwhelmingly positive in terms of the region’s role in underpinning the UK’s AI growth ambitions.

North-East ideally placed to deliver digital infrastructure for an AI-fuelled digital future - Part 1 Following on from our highly successful North-East data centre roadshow, which took place in Newcastle earlier this year, we keep the region’s data centre conversation going, as Ed Bissell, Sales Director at Stellium Data Centres, Lewis Cobb, Global Director at Durata and Jordan Toulson, Senior Product Manager at QiO Technologies Ltd, discuss the challenges and opportunities of developing the infrastructure required to deliver the data centres and associated digital infrastructure required to realise the North East AI Growth Zone’s full potential. All three are overwhelmingly positive in terms of the region’s role in underpinning the UK’s AI growth ambitions.

How to address external infrastructure failures and outages linked to connectivity issues Richard Petrie, CTO at LINX, discusses the recent Uptime Institute’s Annual Outages Analysis Report which finds that networking and connectivity continue to sit at the top of the most common causes of IT outages, reinforcing the importance of resilience in this area. As organisations face growing pressure from network congestion, external threats and increasing reliance on third-party providers, resilience across both network and data centre infrastructure is becoming critical. Richard explains that the backbone of a strong redundancy strategy is a secondary fabric that allows data to be rerouted during periods of disruption or risk, helping organisations remain operational even when the primary network is compromised.

Reinventing engineering for the Age of AI Rob Knoth, Sr Solution Marketing Group Director, Cadence provides brilliant insight into the company’s expanded partnership with NVIDIA to deliver accelerated solutions across agentic AI, physics-based simulation and digital twins to unlock new levels of productivity and accelerate next generation engineering design flows across semiconductor design, physical AI systems and hyperscale AI factories.

Data centre gas connections enquiries surge James Earl, CEO of Future Energy Networks (FEN), outlines how gas networks received well over 100 connection enquiries from data centre developers in 2024 and 2025. Published by FEN – the representative body for the UK gas networks – the figures demonstrate how enquiries have risen exponentially, with around three times as many submitted in 2025 compared to 2024. Thiss dramatic increase in the number of data centre enquiries to gas networks reflects the long delays developers are encountering in accessing the electricity grid. James explains that, to get ahead in the global AI race, bolster economic growth and secure future investment, the UK, and the data centre sector specifically, must harness the immense potential of both gas and electricity systems.

'Alarming' gaps in US data centres’ cyber security defences Rahul Powar, explains that, as cyber threats increasingly target critical infrastructure, a new analysis from Red Sift exposes major email security weaknesses across the US’s largest data center operators. Despite powering the country’s digital economy, more than a quarter of the top 100 data centres fail to enforce basic email authentication, leaving the door wide open to domain spoofing and phishing.

A viable pathway to a genuine, distributed, green, and secure digital future Andy Bates, CISO/Chief Product Officer at StonesThro, explains how the company, working in partnership with Cornerstone, a leading mobile infrastructure services provider, has successfully executed a groundbreaking Proof of Concept (POC) for micro-edge computing. The trials have demonstrated that distributed architectures can deliver sub-10ms latency, essential for many IOT applications, while significantly reducing the carbon footprint of AI and data processing. As Andy summarises, taking the compute power usually locked away in massive warehouses and deploying it in the regions where it is actually needed and makes the cloud local, sovereign, and sustainable.

A picture paints a thousand words Jeevan Kalanithi, CEO at OpenSpace, explains how “visual intelligence” is becoming a new layer of infrastructure for how large projects get built, outlining how the company’s technology has evolved from a jobsite documentation tool into a platform now embedded in the day-to-day operations of major global construction projects – particularly as AI-driven demand accelerates data centre builds.

Data centre developers needs to address community opposition David Rubenstein, Shareholder in law firm Polsinelli’s Real Estate Practice Group in Seattle, provides insights into the challenges data centre developers face regarding community opposition and considerations they should keep in mind while navigation moratoriums and widespread opposition.

CNDCP Paper outlines potential pitfalls in proposed rating scheme for data centres Lex Coors, chair of the Climate Neutral Data Centre Pact (CNDCP) board, discusses the organisation’s paper highlighting some areas of concern with the European Commission’s proposal for a sustainability rating scheme for Europe’s data centres. Whilst the Pact has supported the concept and the drafting of the proposal throughout, it believes that in key areas its advice and insight has not been clearly heard. Several areas in particular give cause for concern; the unintended consequences of which could damage Europe’s competition and growth agendas in the digital era.

Project Mercury promises the UK’s first pre-trained, sovereign LLMs James Drayson, Co-Founder & CEO of Locai Labs and Mark Boost, Founder and CEO of Civo, explains how Locai Labs, the UK’s sovereign AI company, and Civo, the British sovereign cloud provider, have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to undertake Project Mercury - a programme to build the UK’s first pre-trained, sovereign large language models (LLMs), With the aim of empowering UK enterprises and government with secure, home-grown frontier models designed to drive innovation and accelerate Britain’s AI independence.

Water, not power, the deciding factor for data centre location? Bill Tesarek, President of Alsay, explains that, as Texas accelerates its position as a hub for AI infrastructure, a less visible constraint is beginning to surface: water availability may become the limiting factor for future growth. While most attention remains on power and grid capacity, operators inside water infrastructure systems are seeing early signals that demand tied to AI is scaling faster than the systems designed to support it.

Data centre market at the beginning of a new infrastructure cycle Jake Bush, RLB Head of Supply Chain and Procurement, discusses the findings of the company’s latest data centre trends report, which finds the industry at the beginning of a new infrastructure cycle after a year of recalibration, but success will be determined less by demand and more by the ability to deliver at scale. Jake explains that the future of Europe’s data centre expansion is not dependent on demand, but whether there is the ability to deliver, with structural challenges to the next wave of digital infrastructure including limited access to power, permitting delays and renewed pressure on materials, equipment and specialist labour.

Getting to grips with gigawatt facilities and constrained grid capacity Brad Johnson, Director, Industry Executive for Electric Utilities at Bentley Systems, explains how smart data centre developers are already recognising that real engineering value lives beyond the fence line. Siting decisions, grid interconnection, renewable energy access, road networks, water supply, and substation constraints determine whether a billion-dollar investment performs or fails. Communities hold equal power in that equation - projects are stalling because developers skipped the social license conversation. Happily, as Brad highlights, the engineering intelligence to get this right already exists - the industry needs to use it.

Fuel cells central to Centrica’s power blueprint Robert Booker, Chief Strategy and Transformation Officer at Centrica, discusses the company’s ‘Navigating The Energy Labyrinth – the blueprint for power data centres’ report, focusing on the industry’s twin challenges of (steeply) rising power demand and grid constraints/resilience concerns. Robert details the work that Centrica is doing to help data centre owners and operators address this situation, not least via the recently announced infrastructure partnership with Delta Electronics - launching with Solid Oxide Fuel Cells (SOFCs), licensed by British solid oxide technology leader Ceres, for off-grid energy generation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwRHnLNLByY

PIC100 platform enters high volume production Sylvie Gellida, General Manager, Optical and RF Foundry Division, STMicroelectronics, discusses the implications of the company entering high-volume production of its PIC100 silicon photonics platform to support AI infrastructure demand. With plans to quadruple capacity by 2027, further expand in 2028 and with PIC100 through-silicon via (TSV) on ST’s technology roadmap, the company is delivering the benefits of higher bandwidth, lower latency, and greater energy efficiency as AI workloads surge.

Centrica and Ceres partnership to deliver multi GW on site fuel cell power Phil Caldwell, CEO of Ceres, explains how the collaboration will accelerate the deployment of solid oxide, low carbon, high efficiency, grid-independent on site power solutions, capable of being deployed much faster than gas turbines or nuclear, to meet the multi-gigawatt demand from data centre, commercial and industrial customers across the UK and Europe.

Can Power Grids Keep Up With AI Demand? Craig Wentworth, Research Director at TechMarketView, discusses the key findings of the company’s new report, “AI data centres and energy responsibility: Who really pays for intelligence at scale?”, which highlights how AI infrastructure is increasing pressure on local energy systems and why responsibility for its environmental impact must be shared across hyperscalers, enterprises, and policymakers. Craig looks at the operational and policy risks of AI infrastructure growth, including local grid strain and strategic prioritisation at a national level and explains how enterprise IT leaders can embed sustainability into AI adoption, from workload architecture to deployment planning.

Inspiring the next generation of digital technology talent Rory Flashman-Wells, Co-Founder, National Data Centre Day, and Managing Director at Spa Communications, and Duncan White, Senior Director of Communications & Marketing at AtlasEdge, National Data Centre Day supporting company, discuss the #BackToSchool theme of this year’s National Data Centre Day. With 12th September marking the second year of the NDCD awareness campaign, both Rory and Duncan are excited as to the opportunity to bring data centre education into classrooms over the coming months, ensuring that the UK has the right quality and quantity of digital infrastructure workers ready to deliver the country’s AI-fuelled, sustainable data centre growth programme.