As more companies move to build data centers, either on their own or in partnerships, the physical realities of these centers draw more attention as enterprises look for ways to excel in both their data handling and the environments of the responsible machines.

Susanna Kass, EVP and head of Innovation, Sustainability Strategy at Baselayer Technology, LLC, and Peter Gross, VP at Bloom Energy, joined John Furrier (@furrier) and Peter Burris (@plburris), cohosts of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, at the IO Conversation – The Data Center as a Platform event. The conversation touched on several topics, though the conversation centered on the role of energy and power supplies in a data center.

Energy on the edge

An early point of discussion came when Kass was asked about new lines of development activity that had her excited. “The newest innovation is actually focusing more on energy savings and growing sustainably,” she said. “I fundamentally believe the cleanest unit of energy is one that you actually don’t waste while you actually still have to do cloud computing at the growing astounding speed sustainably.”

She added: “One of the key big trends I’ve actually observed is the growth of the edge computing. So the mega-data center will continue to grow.” She also touched on the idea that as “the growth is actually … driven by the devices … it’s going to be at the edge.”

New maps ahead

Gross shared his perspective on some of the long-term changes and new revolutions. “The data-center industry is very risk-averse,” he stated. “For the longest time, innovation was coming slowly, until about five, six years ago, with the event of hyperscale data centers. Different reliability expectation, different conditions enable these companies … to bring some very interesting, new concepts, new technologies.”

He continued: “Now, we’re seeing a real transformation, not only in terms of power, but also cooling, securing deep physical, physical logistics associated with data-centers. It’s a brave, new world, and the energy components … play a major role here, because it’s such an important, expansive and major component of the physical reliability of the data center.”

Onsite and OCP

From there, Gross focused on the move toward energy usage optimization, as well as its limits. “The concept of … onsite generation is gaining ground rapidly, and for … a whole slew of reasons … the reliability of the grid is a significant factor,” he said.

As of yet, he added, “There is no real sustainable onsite generation solution. When you talk about sustainable, green power, you think of either wind or solar – thermal might be a factor. But they don’t satisfy the basic requirements of continuous availability, which is essential in the operation of a data center.”

He concluded with an emphasis on one driving force in particular. “I would certainly not underestimate the importance of OCP: Open-Compute Project,” he said. “It fundamentally, in my opinion, changes this industry. This whole industry has got to the point where it’s really mature enough to talk about becoming a commodity. And I’m not trying to minimize the significance of these new elements. It’s all about industrializing, standardizing, this whole business.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of The IO Conversation – The Data Center as a Platform event.

Photo by SiliconANGLE