Top 5 Data Center Trends for 2020-2025

Trend 1: high density

The performance of processors and servers is constantly increasing as the computing power of IT equipment grows. With the increasing demand for artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, the importance of AI computing power is also increasing. To balance performance and cost, data centers will increase capacity density. Currently, the power density in the data center ranges from 6 to 8 kW per rack. This value is expected to reach 15–20 kW by 2025.

Trend 2: impact on the environment

Data centers currently account for 3% of the world's total energy consumption. It is expected that by 2025, the total energy consumption of data centers will exceed 1000 TWh. At the same time, the issues of energy saving, emission reduction and operating costs (OPEX) are acute. Improving energy efficiency and greening data centers is inevitable. This is the mainstream trend towards clean energy and waste heat as well as conserving resources (energy, land, water and materials) throughout the entire lifecycle of a data center. China's average energy efficiency (PUE) ratio of new data centers is projected to fall to 1.1 over the next five years.

Trend 3: rapid deployment

Internet services often experience surges in demand, in which the data and traffic requirements on the service side increase dramatically. Therefore, there is a need for rapid deployment of data centers. On the other hand, data centers have already evolved from a supporting system to a working one. Faster deployment means faster benefits are realized. Currently, data centers are being commissioned in 9-12 months. This term is expected to be reduced to six months.

Trend 4: link between energy and IT systems

A drop in PUE does not mean that data center energy consumption is immediately optimized. To achieve this, it is necessary to consider not just power plants, but to evaluate and optimize the energy consumption of the data center as a whole. Comprehensive innovation, spanning facility design, IT hardware, chipsets, data and cloud technologies, will align energy and IT systems to support dynamic energy conservation and optimize energy efficiency across the entire data center.

Trend 5: reliability

As smart technologies are increasingly used in data centers, so are the number of threats to network security. Preventing malicious attacks and environmental threats, including network intrusions, requires a data center to provide resilience, systems security, privacy, community safety, reliability, and availability.