How AI Data Centers Could Cut Energy Costs by 75%

[00:00:00]Can you give us like an example in a like an average data center or XYZ data center how much money are they going to save if they implement something like this?

[00:00:07]>> So average data center today let's call it 5 megawws air cooled if you move to direct liquid cooling and fault managed power we calculate you save 75% of your energy cost.

[00:00:21]>> Touch safe means that a network engineer or someone that's not a like certified electrician could install this or use it. Is that right?

[00:00:28]>> Right. That's exactly right. So power over Ethernet. Can you do you need a certified electrician today? Same cabling practices with fault managed power. I >> I also think with the the sheer volume and scale of demand for electricians, it's going to start putting people in more unsafe, you know, trying to meet the demand means you're going to be in a more unsafe. So we think it's going to be embraced as a this is going to be an easier, faster way and a safer way for me to go and uh uh connect or connect devices.

[00:00:53]>> Everyone, David Bumble back with two very special guests. Denise, great to have you back on the show.

[00:00:57]>> It's great to be back, David. Stephen, great to have you here.

[00:00:59]>> Oh, it's great to be here for the first time. Super excited.

[00:01:02]>> So, Denise, you always come with toys.

[00:01:04]What are we looking at?

[00:01:05]>> Always. So, look, we've evolved and we uh we are now energy networking systems.

[00:01:10]It's a little bit more specific to the technology that we're bringing to market. You know, I always carry cables in my in my pocket. Well, when you have revolutionary technology, uh seeing having props helps people see what it is. Right. Here on the show floor, um we have demos, things people can touch. But when you're out at a restaurant, a bar or meeting having cables to say, "Hey, this is this was two decades old.

[00:01:34]There's something new coming." Look at the differences. People start to, you know, internalize. It's good.

[00:01:40]>> So, okay. So, I see. Is that a normal Ethernet cable?

[00:01:44]>> Normal power over Ethernet cable, right?

[00:01:46]But it tops out at 100 watts. Yeah.

[00:01:48]Okay. There's a new class of power for the first time in 40 years in the National Electrical Code here in the states called class 4 fault managed power. Terrible name. Um engineers did it of course, but it's it's literal. So it's fault managed. And this particular cable, it's a pandeuit cable, can do 1,000 watts, right? There are eight pairs of on on this cable. So 8,000 watts. Here's 100. Here's 8,000.

[00:02:16]Everything is going faster today with AI and when you look at the infrastructure needed to support it, this also has to change.

[00:02:22]>> This is Spend with fault managed power system, the first class 4 power system in the market. And just to kind of explain it to you briefly what this is, think about how we run electricity in buildings today. You have electrical panels going through conduit run by electrician going out to outlets. Yeah, >> that's kind of the best analogy to compare this to. This is a similar way but actually making power delivery safe inside or outside buildings. What the technology does, it takes regular AC power that we know of today in the back of what we call a transmitter chassis.

[00:02:53]>> Okay.

[00:02:54]>> In the front, it's got these transmitter modules. Think of them as intelligent breakers like a breaker panel in the in the house.

[00:03:00]>> Oh, yeah. Those things that you push up and down, right?

[00:03:01]>> Exactly. It's pushing out high voltage, >> but it's actually safe enough that you can touch it if it's these are intelligent enough to shut the circuit off to not harm you. There's a short circuit or anything that could potentially start a fire, these are also intelligent enough to shut down instantly.

[00:03:18]>> Um, so it was really fun. Uh, you know, NT is a great partner with Cisco. How many years has it been?

[00:03:22]>> 35 years this year.

[00:03:23]>> Yeah, 35 years. And and for those who don't aren't as familiar with, uh, NT, let's give a little bit of background.

[00:03:30]>> Yeah. Well, so entity as Denise said, 35 years together with Cisco, super partnership. I think one of the things that I'm really proud of, it's been a lot of it is based on purpose. So, if you look over that heritage, we've done some great things together. Um, but also it's a broader organization that sometimes people haven't heard of, right? It's one of the biggest data center companies in the world. So, this to us is a super important uh topic to to uh talk about. We're also Japanese heritage and really purpose is at the core of what they do. So, how do we start making sure we're ready for AI, responsible AI, and how do we start looking at addressing that? And that's why I think this partnership works so well.

[00:04:04]>> How many countries do you guys >> So, we're in over 70 countries uh globally.

[00:04:09]>> How many how many customers?

[00:04:11]>> Oh, tens of thousands. So, we're about 30 30 billion business um in industries as far about three half billion dollars in R&D every year. So, um everything from we were at the the forum last year.

[00:04:24]everything from how to beam down energy from space from solar farms to how to intercept uh uh lightning strikes with drones capture the electricity and store the energy fascinating. So we do some really really cool stuff and then quantum and and uh the energy side. So yeah it's a very varied company. So let's go on this journey right so um I was you know we were sharing what this new revolutionary power distribution technology is with NT and given the background of energy efficiency actually Stephen and I met in Cisco's brand new Paris office when it first opened and we were talking about all the energy efficiency happening in this beautiful historic building that looked like looked like you were in Versailles you couldn't see >> a P you couldn't see an access point you couldn't see a camera but they were all there hidden and what we do is we use DOE for a lot of these endpoints but this technology fault manage power can actually power the appliances with DC touch safe power so that's the revolutionary part is it's touchs safe up to 400 volt DC now I don't know if everyone understands what touchsafe power is got to explain it please yeah so if somebody asked you to to touch 380 volt DC your answer would be >> I want to go to heaven >> right that's exactly right And what what people don't understand is when when things start to happen with arc flash, it starts fires. And a fire can start from a speck of dust in a data center, especially at some of these really high rack densities we're talking about. So Steven here was on this mission of sustainability and purpose, but building that into business. And I was on that same journey and I was like, look, why don't we bring these companies together?

[00:05:59]We work also very closely with Panduit, who actually has some units on the market today that are UL certified. So again, touch safe power to all these appliances that exist out there. What a lot of people don't realize is solar is in fact uh DC native. A lot of renewable energies are DC native. A lot of data centers are going all DC, right? So does this kind of line loss or like what were you seeing with the carbon calculators you were doing and why are people like why do they care so much about energy efficiency?

[00:06:27]>> Yeah. So we're well there's a combination of multiple things depending on what region you're in, what part of the world, but it's everything from big goals have been set. How are we going to become more energy efficient? How are we going to hit like as an example, right?

[00:06:38]>> Yeah. It's it's um becoming like we're increasingly getting close to those dates and at the same time there's an increased demand because of AI on energy on trying to build data centers like I'm from Ireland, a lot of data centers in Ireland. Um and you get also the communities around those saying well actually hang on we don't really want data centers in our area. So how do we start getting more responsible in the energy that comes in and really reduce the amount of energy wasted and this is where we came in. And so as Denise said, uh, bonded by purpose, um, but also how to drive a more, uh, sustainable business, uh, going forward.

[00:07:08]>> Is it like 70% loss or something? What's the loss from AC to DC or something like that?

[00:07:12]>> Well, every time you go AC/DC, you lose a couple percentage points. So, in a data center, there's anywhere between 3 to six hops of um, conversion. So, that adds up pretty quick. When you do distance and the type of delivery, there's also more loss. just the transmission lines alone to get power to a building here in the states is between 5 to 20% line loss just to get it to your building and then every place in the building that you're going AC to DC you're losing more power. I think what so many people take for granted is you just turn on a light switch in most places in the world >> and you expect power to turn on.

[00:07:46]>> Yeah. Yeah.

[00:07:46]>> Right. But imagine if a data center goes up next to your hometown, you can't you won't expect that anymore. brownouts will become more and more common. And we're seeing that in a lot of these states where there's a lot of this backlash.

[00:07:59]>> So the the global reach of both these companies, part of what we're trying to do is put together these architectures that an education and awareness there's a better way to build.

[00:08:09]>> Yeah.

[00:08:09]>> But it's also having that more systemic conversation instead of somebody going having an AI conversation, somebody going and having a networking conversation, an electricity conversation. It's like, well, actually these are all interconnected. They're so dependent on each other. what are the impacts of a decision here over here and I think that's one of the great things the breadth of both companies coming together the insights that we bring mean that we can actually model those out so as I said you know responsible for sustainability solutions it's like well okay what's the impact from a sustainability perspective but also now everyone's concerned about the cost of energy they're concerned about um you know what the what the future of that cost of energy is going to be like how do you start to budget for that well actually we want to go in the opposite direction in that we want to say well how do we become way more efficient how do give you the insights, the control to be able to actually control it and take that, I suppose, cost destiny back into your own control.

[00:08:57]>> Yeah. Because not everyone's going to care about sustainability, right? But they're going to care about how much money they're saving.

[00:09:01]>> Oh, yes. And what that's exactly where we first started, right? Cisco put together data telemetry across our entire portfolio. We threw it in a data foundation. We opened it up for free with APIs. He came in, gobbled it up with NT, and turned it into a carbon calculator. And these are the types of things that our companies can do when we partner at scale.

[00:09:20]>> Yeah. Can you give us like an example in a like an average data center or XYZ data center how much money are they going to save if they implement something like this? So average data center today let's call it 5 megawws air cooled if you move to direct liquid cooling and fault managed power we calculate you save 75% of your energy cost that does not include labor or materials of which there's a lot of secondary things. Um what that actually translates to is 2.3 times the amount of compute for the same amount of energy.

[00:09:53]So depending if you just want to save energy or you want more compute, you can you could take that equation every which way you want.

[00:09:58]>> That is a lot of money.

[00:10:00]>> It's a lot of money. 65% of the of the energy in legacy data centers. These are just your leg like you know average like 10 kilowatt rack data centers. 65% of that energy is what we call non-useful power. It's going to cool and it's going through line distribution line loss. So, you know, raise your hand if you want to be taxed for way more than you're making. No one, right? But that's effectively what's happening is you're paying these high costs for just a little bit of energy.

[00:10:29]>> So, you were talking about people don't necessarily want a data center in their backyard because it's the noise, right?

[00:10:34]So, I'm assuming with this if it's liquid cooled and this car is going to be quiet.

[00:10:38]>> Yeah, it's going to be much quieter.

[00:10:39]It's not just the noise, it could be water scarcity, it could be energy. Um and so I think now what we need to do is we need to think more holistically at the at even the point of sight selection as to what are all of the systems that it's going to draw upon. Um there's a lot of there's a lot of stats that are coming out both in terms of investment and number of projects that are getting stopped stalled or completely delayed because you don't have all the right components.

[00:11:04]>> Yeah.

[00:11:04]>> And so if you're going to build make sure you're building in a way that's more sustainable that's more um that's going to be safe. Right. there's there's danger with a lot of these high voltages uh but something that's going to be resilient for that community and there's a way to do it there is a more responsible way but it takes some new revolutionary innovation and technology um and global companies helping to change that paradigm shift of education >> so the question I have to ask you is this being deployed is it available today are people installing it >> 100 years ago there was something called the current wars between Edison and Tesla and they were arguing before between DC and AC power Edison's dream and I'm going to leave you one of these stickers Edison 's dream was always there's no need for anything but DC power except it was really dangerous right well fault manager power makes it safe >> so now the question is where do you always already have DC systems you can do DC everywhere so what we did is we came together with um Panduit which actually has um boxes available today for FMP to get into a bunch of strategic accounts so we want to go after the early adopters those who are hungry to go make make a difference, the change makers in the world who believe in innovation and believe in technology and with the global reach of our customer base of which a lot of it does overlap um we want to go and and get these kits into their environments.

[00:12:23]>> Yeah. And even like the last few days has been really insightful for me because to to your point about not everyone cares about sustainability.

[00:12:30]Everybody we've met has cares about energy. So everybody uh we our stand has been absolutely packed. We've done three sessions over the last three days and the people coming up and saying actually this anyone with a telco background is like DC to DC at the last okay touch safe I'm seriously interested and watching that level of excitement and particularly at the end of a long day where people are walking you know they're tired watching that it gives us real a real sense of we're on the right path here this is really going to make a difference and what we're really excited about working with Denise on project Edison is the fact that this really starts to move us from you know reporting around sustainability reporting around energy to actually doing something driving that optimization giving people an alternative and what we're seeing is people are looking for guidance as to how do I do things differently well this is different but it's safe >> so I'm I'm always slow right touch safe means that a network engineer or someone that's not a like certified electrician could install this or use it is that right >> right that's exactly right so power over Ethernet can you do you need a certified electrician today same cabling practices with fault manage power so we're talking about a new class of sort of low voltage cabling practice ices. There's still a need for electricians. Make no mistake, right? There's actually a global shortage of them. So, when we think about labor and where the stratification and segmentation of low voltage labor and and certified electricians, well, now you have more and more skill sets um and career paths for people who are in the trades, which I think is really exciting. U one of the things we've recently announced with Cisco learning and this is going to help with NT's growth uh too as we're training more people is energy networking systems and fault managed power with panduit we are giving away training for free >> right and badges for free and we're training those who are coming out of school because when people started college from when they graduated with AI those some of those majors are no longer quite as relevant right so this is opening up huge amounts of opportunity for these generations at different places in their career to say those you know like you said in the telco space who always dreamed of DC to DC to those who were just coming up and said I'm not I I don't really want to get electric you know electrocuted I'm not that super interested in all the electrical side but now you bring data and power together and now I can actually go into it with networking some of that power that opens up a whole new set of doors >> I'm going to play devil's advocate >> cababling in a building I'm assuming I'm not just going rip out the whole building and put this in. Is this only for like new deployments or how does this fit in?

[00:15:00]>> It's a really common question. So what we see around retrofits um what buildings have a typical 30 to 40 year um time life cycle. Buildings that were built 30 to 40 years ago did not have internet in them, Ethernet built in, right? So what is now happening is there is actually $3 trillion coming up for refinancing of buildings globally. 3 trillion in the next two years. If even if you say half that is going to have some kind of upgrade because you know they might need a little bit more Wi-Fi or Ethernet this has the same cabling practice as that right so retrofit projects will now increase the utilization in the experience of these buildings and that just goes hand in hand new builds it's a no-brainer existing builds and retrofit we're seeing a lot of of opportunity for people who just want more juice or just energy cost savings as Steven said >> but even if you look at like postco we I think organizations have struggled with the back to work, you know, the structure and the layout of offices. So, they become very used to how do we start laying out this cable with the electricity is more challenging, right?

[00:16:02]But they're very very used to adapting on this. And the fact that it's uh we keep touching on it, touch safe. Um the the fact that it's touch safe means that your network engineer is able to do it.

[00:16:13]It's one of the most common things and feedback I get is like, oh, the speed that we can now uh deal with the requests from our business to change is simple things like video conferencing units or access points or desks. You know, this would dramatically make a difference to us. You know, it's those kind of small things. So, it's you're absolutely right about the retrofit side of things, but also how do you drive that flexibility at a day-to-day level.

[00:16:33]>> So, we were mentioning data centers, right? And you kind of spoke about some of the other devices. Does that mean that that new cable would be used to power a whole new class of devices inside buildings that >> or existing devices?

[00:16:46]>> Yeah. So like because we're not using PoE now or it needs too much still no POE will still be relevant for the endpoint. So if you have an access point or a camera or sensors, phones, no problem for PoE. But the actual switches or appliances servers that traditionally take AC power supplies, now you can use DC power.

[00:17:04]>> So I'm just thinking about traditional.

[00:17:06]you you don't really want your Ethernet cable wrapped right next to your power cable, but with this it doesn't matter.

[00:17:11]Right.

[00:17:11]>> Right. And so, think in the US, you actually need steel conduit. You have to you have to they call it bend pipe, right? Every time you're doing electrical work, that's why electricity um electricians are typically the most expensive labor you have in a lot of new builds. Um in this case, they would all sit nice and neatly structured cable in a cable tray side by side.

[00:17:30]>> Yeah. So, that's huge, right? So, it's not just like the the people that can deploy it, but also like you said, like you don't need the special pipes and all the rest of it.

[00:17:36]>> All the material. And in a data center, it's copper bus bars.

[00:17:39]>> Yeah.

[00:17:40]>> That's a tremendous amount of weight, cost, materials.

[00:17:44]>> What's the push back that you've had on this, if any?

[00:17:46]>> The biggest push back is just people wrapping their head around this is new.

[00:17:50]This breaks down. It's not doesn't neatly sit in facilities and real estate. It doesn't neatly sit with it.

[00:17:56]So, how does this come to be? Right?

[00:17:58]It's it's brand. Nobody again nobody is asking to go touch high voltage DTC and so when they realize that it's possible you start to really quickly see those who fall into the evangelist early adopters change agents and those who are you know more of the lagards naysayers late adopters which is okay but we just need to understand where they sit in that >> but when it comes to this it changes minds very quickly I think >> very quickly >> y but I also think though it's it's trying to get people to realize the impact they can have within their professional life um is huge. Like we I've asked people all this week, do you think the world is in the best position it's ever been in? And everybody has said absolutely not. I'm like, okay, do you feel like what you do at home is going to make a difference? And they go, absolutely not. Do you realize in your job some of the changes that you can drive adopting this innovation? So, while it's very easy to fall into the trap of my day-to-day requirements are this, you know, I've got to just go and deliver what I've got to go and deliver.

[00:18:54]The power of being able to go home and say to your family, today I did something really cool. I did this and this is the impact it's going to have.

[00:18:59]And that's one of the reasons why we developed the carbon calculator was so that people could have the insights as to well actually I'm making a difference. I've just taken 500 tons of carbon out or I've just gone and delivered this. I've saved 70% of our electricity. So one of my call outs to people is actually realize the impact that you can have as an individual in your professional life is huge.

[00:19:17]>> Yeah.

[00:19:18]>> So embrace it. It's safe. It's you know it saves money. So it's it's one of those scenarios that everyone's winning as opposed to people think sustainability. Oh that sounds like it's going to cost us money. Thanks. But no, this is a a win across the board.

[00:19:30]>> Well, it's technology that's good is also good for business.

[00:19:34]>> Yeah, 100%. I've been in the in this game a long time. I remember years ago where we had traditional telefan networks. We had the traditional telefony cables and then >> y >> Cisco voiceover IP.

[00:19:46]>> A lot of guys lost their jobs because network engineers started taking their jobs and deployed VoIP solutions rather than the old traditional stuff and all those traditional cables got removed. Is the same thing going to happen to electricians or is is this like a different situation?

[00:20:00]>> Well, knowing that we have a global shortage of of electricians today, I actually think this is a really exciting thing because this opens up a whole new ball game of safe power. We still need certified electricians for a lot of that heavy labor work, but now there's more and more things that are being connected today than ever before. And I think if you go back to remember the old um phone jobs where there was actually a human being behind, I don't think anyone misses those jobs.

[00:20:23]>> Exactly. Yeah.

[00:20:24]>> Right. I I also think with the the sheer volume and scale of demand for electricians, it's going to start putting people in more unsafe, you know, trying to meet the demand means you're going to be in a more unsafe. So, we think it's going to be embraced as a this is going to be an easier, faster way and a safer way for me to go and uh uh connect or connect devices.

[00:20:42]>> Yeah. So, it's not like they're going to be replaced. It's actually just something that they could add to the tool to tool belt as an example. Right.

[00:20:48]Exactly. Right. I'm slow. So, give us a quick summary. just hit the high points of why this is so cool and why I should know about this.

[00:20:56]>> Look, it's a new power distribution system. It's revolutionary. It's better, faster, safer, and cheaper. It's actually good for the planet as well because it uses a lot less materials.

[00:21:07]So, when you have something like that, the bigger question I have is how fast can you get it to speed and scale? And what role does your current job play in getting it to speed and scale?

[00:21:16]>> You've got to you got to say something or you Yeah. Yeah. No, look, it's hard to add like Denise's um her passion straight off the bat for this really uh captivated me because trying to see something that is a win across the board, you know, it's not often that you find that, you know. So, when you do find something like that, you you turn around and it's actually looking across the marketplace and going guys like this this is a win for everybody. I really don't think there's too many times that comes across. So, I said safe, cheaper, faster, more agility. I I struggle to think of an organization who that doesn't attract.

[00:21:50]>> If I want to learn this stuff, Cisco have free training I can take.

[00:21:54]>> Yes.

[00:21:54]>> What about companies who are interested?

[00:21:56]Does do you have stuff on NT's website?

[00:21:58]>> Yeah.

[00:21:59]>> You know, where do I go to learn more?

[00:22:00]>> Well, obviously NT is we we've been uh engaged with Denise over on the team over the last couple years. You know, reach out to the teams in NT. We're in every country that most of our most of our clients are. Um and we're seeing that way of as I said stitching it together. So whether it's a client who's actually in the process of rolling out uh you know a new site, if it's somebody who's concerned about energy in the long haul, if it's somebody who's going actually we want to get ahead of this, we want to instrument more of our uh environment. Like this week we have seen people really want to embrace innovation. Um and I I think reach out to NT, give us a call, reach out to me on LinkedIn. We'd love to have the conversation.

[00:22:34]>> I think there's also think about who who might be interested in this. There might be executives. There might be those who are just graduating. There might be those who are who've been in the industry for a long time on the electrical side. Those who have been on the IT side for a long time. So what we're in the process of doing is actually creating content fit for every one of those audiences. So there are learning platforms that we have at scale whether it's the black belt partner training, Cisco learning, Cisco University, um white papers for executives. We have something for all these different audiences. And if there's an audience that's missing, please raise your hand. We would love to connect um and and work with you.

[00:23:09]>> Thank you so much for sharing, Denise, Stephen. Thanks so much. Really appreciate it.

[00:23:13]>> Absolutely.

[00:23:14]>> Any final words or can people connect on LinkedIn? I think you mentioned that already. Absolutely.

[00:23:19]>> LinkedIn, keep following and and and staying in touch because there's more and more education that will continue and we'll continue to share customer success stories as well as those come along. I was just going to say actually one of the things that we see is when people uh reach out you find the amount of believers out there and I believe there's a better way of doing this. This is the excitement that you get from them really does uh does empower all of us.

[00:23:42]So I'd say reach out, connect um let's go on this journey together.

[00:23:46]>> Thank you both. Awesome.