Now more than ever, the need for gigabit capable internet access is imperative to both our business and personal lives. As deployments of IoT, 5G, AI and analytics applications become more frequent, businesses will require IT infrastructure that supports higher speeds and increased reliability to keep pace with the digital transformation. Bringing fiber and 5G to a town puts them in the fast lane, changing the way a community does business and elevating their economic landscape. However, smaller cities often don’t have the fiber & IT infrastructure needed to help them make this transformation. EdgePresence & Schneider Electric joined forces to help level the connectivity playing field for Tier 3 and Tier 4 cities by designing and deploying highly secure multitenant Edge Data Centers to serve all use cases within a city. Together they share how their creative business partnership delivered fast, repeatable, and highly resilient, efficient edge data centers and helping to bridge the nation’s digital divide. This joint presentation will explore how their unique partnership has developed unmanned, modular data centers at the edge to give customers in various markets across the U.S. the network access and connectivity they need.

Data center loads are increasing worldwide, often at a faster rate when compared to other loads on the grid. These loads are often served via renewable energy power purchase agreements (PPAs), with the goal of achieving carbon-neutrality. With this speed of growth, there’s a new, forced symbiotic dynamic between the grid and the load that’s more nuanced and complicated versus the past. Larger loads are now required to provide grid stability and continuity of operations in several locations in the US. This allows data center users to reevaluate their power infrastructure options by mixing traditional and renewable energy systems while achieving both greener power, grid stability and lower system cost. Speakers will present one idea that achieves this goal at a far lower cost and better-than-typical reliability.

Rapid “edge” growth requirements and global business model transformations are driving increased use of “repurposed” properties, creating unique opportunities and challenges. Presenters will highlight the challenges, best practices and lessons learned from a cooling/chillwater system expansion of an operating repurposed data center, adding capacity and enhancing efficiency with minimal business model impact or safety risk. 1623 Farnum is a rapidly growing carrier hotel provider, providing on-ramps to hyperscalers in central USA. In 2020, market growth drove a need to expand capacity and efficiency of a 9 story data center, requiring upgrade and expansion of the entire cooling system while maintaining continuous mission critical service, amidst the challenges of COVID. In essence, a challenge similar to transforming a 737 to a 767, while flying with masks on. The presenters will review challenges in design, delivery, construction, commissioning, project schedule and budget control.

The internet of things has redefined everyone’s relationship with data as well as the expectations of privacy. We have entered the second generation of IoT solutions where instead of IoT supplementing an operation, it is now becoming the analytical solution of the system. In this presentation Michael Skurla, CPO of Radix and Keith Rutledge, GM of EdgePoint at Compass Datacenters explore where data infrastructure, edge computing, telecommunications advancements, and IoT technology have married to enable offerings from consumer applications to critical infrastructure upkeep. This presentation explains the analytics revolution that is no longer just confined to facility management.

What is driving the growth of urban data centers and the emergence of the edge in the industry? Over the past decade as growth in the cloud has created an enormous remote campus—latency becomes an increasing concern—today, hyperscalers have been coming back to urban environments from the farm fields. This overlap with the urban environment presents challenges and unique design opportunities for today’s data centers. You’ll hear about emerging trends from thought leaders in real estate, architecture and engineering with recent case stories.

This presentation will deliver solutions supporting data centers in the achievement of decarbonization goals. Leveraging a longstanding relationship investigating renewable fuels in the electric power space, including Hydrogen and HVO, Caterpillar and STACK Infrastructure will outline fuel options available to data centers of all sizes through the short, medium, and long-term highlighting the benefits and challenges that accompany these options. All of this in support of the need to deliver 99.999% uptime.

As digital transformation is boosting demand for data centers and edge facilities, data center operations, maintenance and facility management are growing increasingly complex. Operators must navigate the challenges of achieving 100% uptime while driving down total cost of ownership in a portfolio of diverse data center locations. This dynamic session will explore how leading facility management practices and advanced data analytics can help data center operators/users leverage technology and next-generation maintenance programs to not only drive efficiencies and reliability in their large, centralized data centers, but also in smaller edge locations.

Battery energy storage systems (BESS) and data center edge use cases are converging. Operators will have the opportunity to dynamically change and coordinate the behaviors of these platforms, offering new economic models and upending the traditional data center and utility approaches. In this session, we will explore how digital twins and measurement infrastructure are changing to enable the industry’s transition to a simulation and test-driven approach to managing edge assets, and how this opens up the opportunity to deliver on the promise of dynamic and grid responsive edge infrastructure.

As the world’s dependence on cloud computing grows unabated, the data center industry must find innovative ways to meet growing demand while achieving ever more stringent sustainability targets. While significant progress has been made on carbon footprint reduction, there’s still much to be done on water consumption. With new chip designs, data center re-design, and the ability to run data center equipment hotter, data center operators are often focused on eliminating their water use entirely. However, there are many benefits to using water for cooling, and it’s critical that the industry take a balanced approach. Join us for a discussion on how the industry is approaching this challenge and what new developments are on the horizon.

Using sustainable energy is the best way to fuel the growth of the edge data center. We’ll look at energy sources, new techniques, and new technologies like new battery chemistry and energy storage systems, fuel cells, renewable integration, microgrids, modular power as well as integrating all these together.