Next month, I’ll be privileged to attend my first-ever Pacific Telecommunications Council (PTC) Annual Conference. This annual event brings together leaders from the telecommunications and data center industries for networking, knowledge sharing, policy discussion, planning, and education. It’s a unique opportunity to meet with peers from across these industries to discuss new challenges, best practices, and how our industry is evolving and changing.

Many of us in the data center industry view PTC as a “can’t miss” event. It’s an opportunity to put aside our day-to-day routines and forsake the never-ending video calls for real face-to-face dialogue and conversations with customers and key partners. And this year’s PTC’24 Conference comes at an important time of change within the data center industry.

Just a few years ago, one could say that there were few obstacles standing in the path of data center industry expansion and progress. The pace of growth was fast but manageable, and the industry was enjoying nearly unencumbered success. But that’s starting to change, and the industry is facing unprecedented challenges that could drastically alter how it operates in the future.

The introduction of exciting new technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), and a massive increase in the adoption and usage of online tools and digital services have given rise to skyrocketing capacity demands. This escalating need for data center capacity is outpacing the industry’s ability to scale, which could potentially prevent even the most innovative and talented developers and builders from meeting technology infrastructure demands.

Further hindering the industry’s ability to scale rapidly is a number of new concerns. These include rising power requirements and the impact of data centers on local power grids, pressure to embrace aggressive sustainability goals, and advanced applications with requirements that are driving a need to reimagine how we design, construct, cool, and power our data centers.

Because of these new challenges, I am anticipating a number of discussions at this year’s PTC Conference about access to electrical power generation and distribution, network bandwidth and latency, sustainability, security, data center design, and new approaches that could enable the industry to meet the unprecedented demand for capacity and density in support of AI.

As an engineer by education and a wannabe architect, I’m excited to see how my peers solve these extraordinary and perplexing challenges. I eagerly anticipate conversations with those at the intersection of modern information technology and data center design – the people inventing solutions to these challenges.

Technology advancement is accelerating, and our industry must find ways to keep up. The data center industry has yet to identify answers to its problems. In other cases, the solutions that have been identified face significant roadblocks that are slowing their deployment.

For example, the industry desperately needs to solve the energy production and distribution crisis. Some industry experts say the answer is small modular reactors (SMRs) or nuclear energy. However, while this may be the only legitimate answer to the production and delivery questions, public perception could deter nuclear power plant development for another type of generation. The industry will have to prove that this technology is safe before this approach can be widely adopted.

To say that I’m excited about this year’s PTC’24 would be an understatement. Our industry is at an inflection point – with demand outpacing our ability to scale and new challenges to overcome. I anxiously await an opportunity to discuss the changes and challenges facing our industry and to hear what our industry peers are saying.

Compu Dynamics has been a trusted partner to the data center community for more than two decades. In that time, our industry has found solutions to nearly every new challenge. But this is a transformative moment in our history. I’m confident that the knowledge we gain at PTC’24 will prepare Compu Dynamics to support our clients and partners for another two decades or more.

In my next article following the event, I’ll share some of the exciting things I heard at PTC’24, and how they’ll shape the data center industry in the future.