Its holistic approach aims to ensure continuous operations, scalable growth and optimal performance for customers as they meet the rapidly evolving demands of the digital economy.
Vertiv, the global digital infrastructure leader has released its latest Vertiv™ Frontiers report. This report details the technology trends and macro forces shaping the evolution of data centers, especially in response to the rapid growth of artificial intelligence (AI). This report highlights innovations in power, cooling, energy autonomy, and digital twin technologies that enable data centers to meet the demands of AI workloads.
Scott Armul, Vertiv’s chief product and technology officer, said the industry is rapidly evolving to meet “the demands of density and speed of AI factory deployment.” He highlighted innovative trends such as high-voltage DC power architectures, advanced liquid cooling, on-site energy generation, and digital twin technology. All of these are critical to supporting gigawatt-scale AI deployments.
The report identifies several macro factors that drive innovation. Rapid deployment at gigawatt scale. Treat the data center as a single computing unit. Silicon diversification requires infrastructure to adapt to a growing variety of chips and computing resources.
From these macro forces, Vertiv highlights five key trends shaping the data center landscape.
- Powering up AI – Traditional hybrid AC/DC power systems are being strained by increasing AI workloads. The move to high-voltage DC architectures reduces inefficiencies, centralizes power conversion, and supports higher rack densities, while on-site generation and microgrids further enhance deployment.
- decentralized AI – As AI adoption increases, enterprises will require flexible deployment of AI inference services. Highly regulated sectors such as finance, healthcare, and defense may leverage high-density power and liquid cooling to maintain private or hybrid AI environments that support both new construction and refurbished facilities.
- Energy autonomy accelerates – Power availability challenges are driving investment in expanded on-site energy generation, including natural gas turbines and other technologies, to ensure reliable operation of AI-intensive data centers. Concepts like Bring Your Own Power (and Cooling) are becoming part of long-term energy strategies.
- Digital twin-driven design and operation – Digital twin technology enables AI-powered virtual mapping and specification of data centers, often using prefabricated modular designs. This reduces deployment time by up to 50% and enables the gigawatt scale needed to scale AI.
- aAdaptive and resilient liquid cooling – Liquid cooling is becoming increasingly important for AI workloads. Use AI to optimize and predict cooling system performance to improve reliability and uptime, and ensure high-value hardware and associated workloads are protected.
With operations in more than 130 countries, Vertiv provides integrated power management, thermal management, and IT infrastructure solutions to support data centers, communications networks, and industrial facilities. Its holistic approach aims to ensure continuous operations, scalable growth and optimal performance for customers as they meet the rapidly evolving demands of the digital economy.
