Auckland keynote Mark Thiele co-founded Edgevana in 2019 after a career in cloud computing where he observed, first hand, the forces shaping the industry and the role for data centres in delivering it.
The startup, which is still in stealth mode, is looking to lower the barrier to entry for companies that are attempting to deploy from one server to hundreds or dozens of racks, or even hundreds of racks of servers anywhere in the world. Basically what Edgevana is looking to do is make it more cost effective for both a buyer and a seller to acquire, or make available, services on infrastructure that’s already in place. The company was set up with a philosophy that much of edge computing won’t come in a big bang, but would rather come through 1000s and 1000s of little opportunities.
Edge personas
The entrepreneur co-opted the term personas from the marketing world and applied it to emerging business cases at the network edge. “When you’re talking to someone about edge, not only do you have to have some relative clarity for what edge you’re actually talking about, but you have to understand what perspective the person you’re talking to is bringing to the edge,” he told W.Media.
He used gaming as an example of understanding these personas. “You have game builders, game publishers, acceleration platforms, actual game platforms and then you have game buyers,” he said. “Each one of those has a different perspective on what the edge is, or how important it is to the success…and who they are responsible to from a buyer and a performance establishment standpoint.”
In some ways, Thiele compared the edge opportunity as analogous to the Internet in the 90s: “People didn’t realise that within five years, if you were a mid-sized or large company and didn’t have a website, you didn’t exist,” he said. “We didn’t think about it then as the internet of Amazon, Google and Facebook today.”
In Auckland, Thiele will pick up the theme of sustainable growth and how data centres now have a key role in balancing the growth in demand for their service with a strategy toward sustainability.
“New Zealand has the opportunity to build campuses for DCs from scratch and to factor in everything from ecological considerations to fully renewable energy,” he said. “Australia and other regions of the South Pacific as well as New Zealand itself stand to benefit from this position and in return New Zealand can be a model for advancing and growing with humanity as its North Star.”
Thiele emphasises that the evolution of technology – whether at the edge or in centralised data centres – cannot be separated from the growing urgency for sustainability. “As we build the future of computing, whether at the edge or in large data hubs, we must do so responsibly. The infrastructure that powers our digital world must adapt to both meet the scale of demand and manage its environmental impact.”
Digital growth means carbon cost
The world is currently seeing one data centre come online every three days. In APAC, rating agency Moody’s forecast data centres will drive a further 5,300 MW of new power supply in the region. Thiele is optimistic the opportunity will overcome energy constraints. “Historically every period of technology evolution has been preceded by a concern over a real or perceived constraint,” he said. “You could select a few examples from recent history, like going from tower computers in the 90s to 1U pizza boxes in the early 2000s or the transition from pizza boxes to virtual machines.”
“If the two aforementioned technological advancements had not occurred, the progress of technology would have been severely stunted,” he said. “I expect we’ll see the same with the growth of data centers and the threat of running out of energy. There is too much opportunity to let any of the current constraints halt our advancement.”
Thiele suggests climate change could also be viewed as a market constraint. “In my experience, there will continue to be aggressive work to develop alternative and renewable energy sources, at issue will be the timing of availability vs the desire to meet demand,” he said.
Power system dynamics vary widely across APAC and are therefore a big factor in data centre location but Thiele believes this will shift over time. “I expect that initially we’ll see data centre distribution continue to be focused on areas of sufficient energy supply,” he said. “However, once the populations attitude towards these services changes from ‘interesting’ to ‘we can’t live without them’, alternative power solutions and new locations will be identified.”
“The success of our growth will largely depend on how effectively we can bring renewable energy online. We can’t assume an immediate cutover, rather I think we should be focused on a transition period of another decade,” he told W.Media. “I’m not saying I like it, I just see no other way as consumer demand drives expansion and we are unable or unwilling to attempt to tamp that demand down.”
“Will renewables eventually be enough, I think we’ll see breakthroughs in consumption efficiency, chip design and stored energy over the next five years that will help immensely,” he added.
Thiele believes renewable energy sources being integrated into data centre operations is inevitable and already underway but cautions there were no easy answers to ensuring consistent power supply with renewables. “The use of variable availability renewables causes complications on any grid, which in turn affects DC strategy and placement,” he said. “Improvements in energy storage is still the critical piece here until we come up with new options or even introduce more nuclear.”
He adds that the industry needs to do some educational work here to avoid accusations of green washing. “There are a number of groups in the industry who are attempting to help the public better understand what data centres are and how they impact daily life,” he said. “When understanding is improved the industry will be in a better position to argue its value and in return they will also need to more effectively address valid public demands for effective and efficient use of resources.”
Expand versus new build
For companies looking to prioritise their investments in expanding existing facilities versus building new data centres, Thiele has the following advice. “This is and should be a combination of the following: what is the ROI of new vs expansion; how does another location increase my customer reach; and are there redundancy or alternative energy options in building new,” he said.
In terms of best practices for ensuring new data centres are built with future technological advancements in mind, he thinks that may become tougher for DC operators over time.
“Specifically as it relates to data centres designed for AI, we’re likely to see hardware life cycles continue to be accelerated for years to come, meaning bigger and hotter chips, replacing existing chips at a more rapid rate than the typical 4-7 years for CPU based infrastructure,” he said. “As a designer, building for single use cases helps, but in addition you need well considered strategies for managing to energy and weight concentration increases.”
“AI can play 100s of roles here, from more effectively allocating hardware to demand to more efficient application designs and improved DC facility and cooling options,” he said. “The sky is the limit here.”
“As for energy efficiency, I believe the industry has done a fairly good job of reducing excess energy use in new facilities,” he added. “I do however, see improvement opportunities remaining in the area of hardware utilisation and application design.”
Mark Thiele at The New Zealand Cloud & Datacenter Convention 2024
Mark Thiele will deliver the keynote: “Digital growth through technology and sustainability” at the New Zealand Cloud & Datacenter Convention 2024 on 31 October 2024 at the Grand Millennium Hotel Auckland.
The New Zealand data centre sector’s rate of growth has raised a number of operational and strategic questions. A situation where local data needs to be housed in facilities overseas can raise issues of jurisdictional risk, that the data housed overseas need to follow overseas rules rather than the rules of the country where the data originated. Recent local growth can be linked to a number of key colocation providers as global cloud providers appear to be at the initial stages of their entry into the New Zealand market. Questions have also been raised as to whether the power grid can cope with the demand of more data centres.
Other challenges faced by local digital infrastructure are those faced by the sector elsewhere around the world – designing and fitting out for high growth, attracting and retaining skilled staff, meeting the full range of sustainability responsibilities beyond energy use including Scope 3, diversity, social and economic impacts. This convention will look at New Zealand’s unique position in the data centre world and its opportunity to maintain this through sustainable digital growth and all that this approach entails.
To register, please visit
https://clouddatacenter.events/events/new-zealand-cloud-datacenter-convention-2024/
[Author: Simon Dux]
