AI demands more from data centers. Learn the five strategic imperatives to build resilience and efficiency.
The pace of technological progress over the last few years has been nothing short of extraordinary, reshaping industries and redefining what’s possible. Artificial intelligence (AI) sits at the heart of this transformation, driving unprecedented demands on infrastructure and operations. A survey from McKinsey showed organizations integrating the use of AI for their respective operations in at least one function. For data center operators, this is a unique challenge and opportunity: How can enterprises, data centers, and companies prepare their infrastructure to support AI while scaling with its rapid evolution?
Figure 1. The percentage of organizations using AI and generative AI (GenAI) in at least one function surged in 2023 and 2024. Source: McKinsey
At Vertiv, we leverage decades of experience to help enterprises and data centers navigate these complex transitions. This ebook outlines five defining imperatives that align your infrastructure and operational strategies with the demands of AI and other emerging technologies. These imperatives are universal, providing actionable insights for businesses across industries—whether you’re in healthcare, government, finance, manufacturing, or beyond.
Rethink the infrastructure roadmap for AI technology adoption and growth with these imperatives:
- Embrace transformation: Learn how to build the data center of the future. Advancements are accelerating—adapt your infrastructure to stay ahead of evolving demand.
- Drive efficiency: Optimize resources, reduce costs, boost performance, and deliver better outcomes for clients.
- Accelerate and lead innovation: Adapt fast to new technologies and market shifts. Prioritize speed to deliver smarter solutions.
- Build confidence: Strengthen security and deliver consistent performance. Earn and maintain your clients’ trust through reliability.
- Stay ahead: Anticipate the future by tracking emerging trends. Adopt a proactive approach to prepare for what’s next.
| Imperatives | Business value | Data center requirement |
|---|---|---|
| Be transformative | Transform products, services, and customer experiences |
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| Be efficient | Streamline processes and eliminate unnecessary costs. |
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| Be first | Increase speed to market, accelerate innovation; create competitive advantage. |
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| Be confident | Reloy on AI systems to perform reliably when needed. |
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| Be future ready | Expand AI use cases and prepare for continued evolution. |
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Figure 2. Enterprises and data centers can use the Vertiv strategic imperatives as a roadmap to maximize and leverage AI for their business development and growth.
We also cite use cases driving the modern data center strategy and how these five strategic imperatives can guide the growth and benefits of each industry. As the use of AI grows in these sectors, these fields can increase the confidence of streamlining operations to gain the benefits of speed, optimization, and scale and bring them closer to their customers:
- Healthcare: The healthcare sector has been reaping the benefits from AI for cost and time, from the speed and commercialization of drug research and development to hospitals' enablement for clinical decision support and patient care.
- Finance: The financial services and banking industry faced several disruptions but also has the biggest potential when it comes to keeping security, catching fraud and risk, driving personalized outcomes, and furthering investment confidence and opportunities.
- Manufacturing: Manufacturing companies have been enjoying the advantages of AI and other related advanced technologies, transforming how they implement designs and development, quality maintenance and assurance, and production management.
- Government: Public agencies have been using AI applications and technologies to increase efficiency in the delivery of services and enhance resource management for various regular and seasonal projects.
Discover how the five imperatives align your initiatives with business goals, enable AI adoption, and prepare your data center for future challenges
Reference design
Vertiv has developed reference designs for retrofit and greenfield data centers to help you navigate integrated solutions for power and cooling AI and other high-performance computing applications.
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