By 2025, IDC says worldwide data will grow 61% to 175 zettabytes, with as much of the data residing in the cloud as in data centers.

With both hyperscale and hyperlocal deployments set to explode in the coming year, how are facility management professionals responsible for manning deployments of all sizes ensuring they stay abreast of new approaches to 24/7 uptime with the consolidation of hardware coupled with the virtualization of applications driving up average density per rack to 15-16kW.

Is there still a gulf of understanding between IT and facilities? What role can automation play in facility optimization with the growth of ‘servers at the edge’ , if any and are we ready for innovations like AR, AI, ML, robotics, big data, and other human enhancing technologies to the maintenance of critical power, data processing and storage?