Kathy Gibson reports from Tognana, Italy – Data centres are the engines of innovation, but face massive challenges to keep up with growing demands from artificial intelligence (AI), power and cooling issues, staffing shortages and sustainability imperatives.
A panel discussion as part of Vertiv Week in Italy, brought together a group of European data centre leaders to discuss these and other issues.
The impact of AI
Tiziano Durante, cloud region lead: EMEA at Microsoft, says AI is driving massive expansion within the Microsoft data centre fleet.
“Microsoft is running with an intensive expansion plan,” he says. “Since 2018, we have added regions covering 36 countries with more than 70 regions.”
The industry is moving so fast that he says Microsoft has gone through several strategy changes in the last years.
One of the impacts of AI is the move from more, smaller data centres to fewer, bigger ones.
But Durante points out there is a still a place for traditional data centres, and these will need to run in parallel with AI factories.
Alessandro Talotta, MD: Italy at Digital Realty, says there have been impacts as a result of AI, but it has affected different part of the world in different ways.
“The Americas are long established in terms of data centres and the presence of Gigawatt centres,” he explains.
In the Europe and EMEA they are considered as a strategic development, and we are looking to new countries and new locations.
“In the Asia-Pacific region, there are promising developments around AI data centres.”
Emmanuel Becker, CEO of Mediterra Datacenters, says the data centre footprint will start to change as a result of AI developments.
“We are coming from generative AI (GenAI) and agentic AI to physical AI. So we are seeing an acceleration in the need for compute and delivery towards creation.
“While you need to have a big centralised engine to deliver the main capacity to run AI, physical AI will drive the need for more data localisation, more intelligent and interaction.
“So we will see a need to grow more regional sites. This is why we are investing in regional data centres in Tier 2 locations.”
These local sites will complement the AI factories, driving access to digital services by providing access, connectivity, service providers and consumers in the local market, Becker believes.
Challenges to the industry
Getting permits is a major issue for the data centre industry in Europe, but perhaps the biggest challenge is time to market, says Durante.
“The time required to move from an idea to operating a dara centre today is still too long.”
Becker agrees that time is key. “We are in a very rapidly-evolving and fluid activity. The technology evolves so quickly, as does customer need, that we need to be very fluid ourselves.”
But permits are a big stumbling block when local authorities throw up obstacles to delivery, he adds.
“We have the technology. Vertiv is helping us to ramp up quickly with pre-fabricated solutions that shrink the time needed to build a data centre.”
Working with local authorities to expedite permits is key, Becker says.
Benefits from standardisation
The ability to standardise data centre builds thanks to modularization is a key benefit, especially for the global players, says Talotta.
“In an environment where the supply chain can be difficult, procurement can be more efficient.”
However, he cautions that not every customer wants the same things, or has different priorities. “So standardisation is a must, but flexibility must also be considered.”
As a hyperscaler with one product – Azure – standardisation is the only way the Microsoft can operate, says Durant.
“Standardisation means we can design the facility all the way to the individual unit in the rack. We sell on product worldwide, so we need to operate the same everywhere.”
Human capital management and the skills shortage
Becker raises an issue that is largely ignored when talking about data centres: the human capital aspect.
“This is something we are all facing,” he says. “AI is changing the world and bringing chance to a lot of companies. But consider this: for the last 10 years we have been hiring the same kind of people. In reality, to accelerate technology, customers and market trends, our people should be evolving too.
“We need to reinvent ourselves, and this is not a small challenge.”
Peter Lambrecht, vice-president: sales EMEA at Vertiv, agrees: “We need thousands of new engineers and developers in the data centre.
Data centres are already massive employers – about 3,2-million people around the world work in data centres and 300 000 new jobs have been added since 2020.
Sustainability is key
When it comes to sustainability, data centres take the blame for a myriad of environmental issue.
“Our industry has a bad rap,” says Lambrecht. “Data centres are believed take up too much space, too much power and too much water.”
The real problem, says Becker, is that we are not good at communication as an industry.
We are working like no other industry to improve efficiency, working with technology providers and local providers to find ways to give back the energy we have left over. We are ready to hand of hot waste, but we need someone to plug it in so it can be used for domestic heating or improving food energy.”
Talotta points out the studies show today’s data centres operate at a PUE of about 1,6. Within a couple of years, this could be as low as 1,1 or I,2 within the next few years.
“But we need collaboration from industry,” he adds.
Vendors can do a lot to get ahead of the race
Vertiv continues to invest in the environment, delivering fast platforms for the future that are also flexible and sustainable.
The problem with Africa
There are a few mature data centre markets in Africa – notably South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya – but a number of factors are stifling development in other countries on the continent.
Talotta points out that most countries in Africa rely on connectivity brought by submarine cables, which means that inland countries are still behind the curve in terms of digital infrastructure.
Terrestrial cables are still a major limiting factor, says Lambrecht. “Yes, we have the submarine cables, but the connectivity between countries is lacking.
“Politicians have to get their act together,” he says. “Today, if you are not on the seaside you have a problem. This is one of the things Africa needs to resolve.”
“We have invested heavily in South Africa, and have a very good footprint,” says Durante. “But we have no visibility in other countries. We tend to cover north Africa from Spain and Italy; and the eastern side from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Emirates.
“We hope new development will happen.”
Local digital needs and digital knowledge are key enabling factors, Talotta adds. “You need knowledgeable people to build data centres, work and deploy them. African countries need to invest in education, and work on political decisions.”