Data Centers Need “One-Stop Shopping”

While visiting the Data Centre World in London, an event that brought together operators, engineers and infrastructure leaders interested in the future of resilient and sustainable data centres, one theme stood out: automation suppliers are moving from “one-size-fits-all” products to industry-specific designs, with data centers now a top priority.

Schneider Electric’s new Altivar HVAC Drives are a good example, aimed at high-uptime, energy-sensitive environments like mission-critical data centers, while also serving hospitals, airports, commercial buildings, and OEM HVAC equipment. The drives are positioned to reduce energy use, improve protection and reliability, and streamline BMS integration via built-in connectivity and a cybersecurity-ready design.

Data center infrastructure, security, power distribution, HVAC, and cooling, remains fragmented. Right now, industrial automation suppliers are stitching together offers from what they already have in-house, then adapting it for the data center environment. In my view, they aren’t moving fast enough to capture the opportunity. The industry is expanding capacity at a blistering pace, also driven by the demands of AI, and pushing higher densities, which raises the bar for reliable, efficient cooling.

The leap from factory automation to the data center world isn’t that big. In many ways, industrial automation suppliers have an edge over traditional building vendors with more capable controllers, stronger networks, and deeper uptime DNA. As with any sector, EPCs will value “industry suite” offerings that pair products with domain know-how and minimize integration effort. The data center construction market is ready for true one-stop shopping.