Growing demand and hardware shortages are forcing service providers to rethink data center capacity planning. For Locaweb Serviços de Internet S/A, a cloud hosting and digital services provider based in Brasil, keeping up with customer needs means anticipating infrastructure requirements earlier and finding alternatives when equipment isn’t readily available.

That pressure is changing how Locaweb approaches infrastructure decisions. The company is working more closely with technology partners, including Dell Technologies Inc., to assess alternative hardware configurations and manage supply challenges without compromising its services, according to Gustavo Gomes Salviano (pictured, right), chief technology officer of Locaweb.

“I think that [growing demand] brings the infrastructure challenge again to the board,” he said. “Now we need to think more quickly and strategically in the infrastructure than we did before.”

Salviano and Diego Puerta (left), Brasil general manager at Dell Technologies Inc., spoke with theCUBE’s John Furrier for theCUBE + NYSE Wired: AI Factories – Data Centers of the Future interview series, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed capacity planning, supply constraints and the engineering collaboration supporting Locaweb’s growth.

Data center capacity planning starts earlier

Locaweb began as a hosting and email provider for small businesses before expanding into e-commerce, marketplace and financial solutions. That broader portfolio has increased the range of services its infrastructure must support, according to Salviano.

“First of all is to anticipate the demands,” he said. “We anticipate … more than we’ve done before. But the second thing is … we are working with our engineers and our partners’ engineers, like Dell, to think about how can we solve the problem that we’re facing.”

Memory availability is among the concerns shaping those discussions, alongside costs and delivery schedules. Locaweb and Dell have discussed supply challenges since last year, considering how to secure the right configurations in time to meet demand, Salviano explained.

“Sometimes we are re-engineering our [infrastructure] needs [to] solve the problem of the time and the length of the time of the delivery, the supply chain,” he said. “It’s challenging us to think about our partners and how we can change that without taking any functionality from our products and from our customers.”

Connecting infrastructure decisions to business needs

Addressing those supply challenges requires more than ordering equipment earlier. Locaweb also needs to consider alternative configurations that can meet its customers’ requirements without compromising performance. The companies’ longstanding relationship helps inform those technical choices. Dell’s familiarity with Locaweb’s environment lets teams assess alternatives against the performance and capacity its services require, according to Salviano.

“When we talk about our needs, our technical needs, they’ll understand our products,” he said. “They know what runs there.”

Those infrastructure decisions are also becoming more important as Locaweb introduces AI capabilities into its business. The company is developing tools that allow nontechnical users to build solutions for their own operational needs. Those tools are helping employees improve business processes, with IT supporting their efforts, Salviano noted.

For Dell, helping customers establish the foundation for enterprise AI begins with understanding their business objectives, according to Puerta.

“It’s not an IT transformation; it’s a business transformation leveraging IT,” Puerta said. “It must come from the leadership. IT is the enabler because what AI is doing is amplifying the possibilities.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of theCUBE + NYSE Wired: AI Factories – Data Centers of the Future interview series:

Photo: SiliconANGLE