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Forces shaping data centre design and operations Early this year, Vertiv released its Frontiers report, which shows that data centre innovation is continuing to be shaped by macro forces and technology trends related to AI. The report [1] draws on expertise from across the organisation and details the technology trends driving current and future innovation, from powering up for AI, to digital twins, to adaptive liquid cooling.
Scott Armul, Vertiv.
V ertiv Chief Product and Technology O icer, Scott Armul said: “The data centre industry is continuing to evolve how it designs, builds, operates and services data centres, responding to the density and speed of deployment demands of AI factories. We see cross-technology forces, including densification, driving transformative trends such as higher voltage dc power architectures and advanced liquid cooling, which are important to deliver the gigawatt scaling critical for AI innovation. On-site energy generation and digital twin technology are also expected to help in advancing the scale and speed of AI adoption.” The Vertiv Frontiers report builds on and expands the company’s previous annual Data Centre Trends predictions (2025). It identifies macro forces driving data centre innovation: Extreme densification – accelerated by AI and HPC workloads Gigawatt scaling at speed – data centres are now being deployed rapidly and at unprecedented scale Data centre as a unit of compute – the AI era requires facilities to be built and operated as a single system Silicon diversification – data centre infrastructure must adapt to an increasing range of chips and compute. The report details how these macro forces have in turn shaped five key trends impacting specific areas of data centre development. Powering up for AI Most existing data centres still rely on hybrid ac/dc power distribution from the grid to the IT racks, which includes three to
four conversion stages and some ine iciencies. This approach is under strain as power densities increase, largely driven by AI workloads. The shi to higher voltage dc architectures enables significant reductions in current, size of conductors, and the number of conversion stages, centralising power conversion at the room level. Hybrid ac and dc systems are pervasive, but as full dc standards and equipment mature, and rack densities continue to increase, higher voltage dc is likely to become more prevalent. On-site generation and microgrids, will also drive adoption of higher voltage dc systems. Distributed AI The billions of dollars invested into AI data centres to date to support large language models (LLMs) have been aimed at supporting widespread adoption of AI tools by consumers and businesses. Vertiv recognises that AI is becoming increasingly critical to businesses but how, and from where, those inference services are delivered will depend on the specific requirements and conditions of the organisation. Although this will impact all types of businesses, highly regulated industries, such as finance, defence, and healthcare, among others, may need to maintain private or hybrid AI environments with on-premises data centres, due to data residency, security, or latency requirements. Flexible, scalable, high-density power and liquid cooling systems could enable capacity through new builds or retrofitting of existing facilities. Energy autonomy accelerates Short-term on-site energy generation capacity has been essential for most standalone data centres for decades, to support resilience. However, widespread power availability challenges are creating conditions to adopt extended energy autonomy, especially for AI data centres. Investment in on-site power generation, via natural gas turbines and other technologies, has several intrinsic benefits but is primarily driven by the need to address power availability challenges. Technology strategies such as Bring Your Own Power (and Cooling) are likely to be part of ongoing energy autonomy plans.
Digital twin-driven design and operations With increasingly dense AI workloads and more powerful GPUs comes a demand to deploy complex AI factories with speed. Using AI-based tools, data centres can be mapped and specified virtually, via digital twins, and the IT and critical digital infrastructure
The Vertiv™ Frontiers report outlines key trends leading the development of next-generation high-density data centres.
4 Electricity + Control MARCH 2026
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