AI Demand is Making Building Your Own Data Center Harder than Ever Before

There are dozens and dozens of purpose-built data centers in Eastern Pennsylvania that were constructed in the early 2000s. Most had projected useful lifecycles of 15-20 years. Nearly all are still in use by organizations trying to figure out what’s next for their escalating IT infrastructure needs.

For some of the companies that built these data centers, much of their future will be in the public cloud, but nearly all will still have a significant need for company-managed infrastructure as well. The issue is where to place that infrastructure.  Building your own data center, which so many Pennsylvania enterprises did two decades ago, is more difficult, time consuming, and costly than ever before.   Strained supply chains are the reason.

Mega Projects Impacting the Supply Chain: Artificial intelligence demand has completely blown up data center procurement as we know it. Hyperscale cloud providers are scrambling to build AI-only data centers, with power delivery and densities dwarfing traditional data centers utilized by most companies.

This has made the construction of smaller data centers problematic, as the drive for AI is crushing supply chains that never fully recovered from COVID. We’re in a new world for data center infrastructure that is seeing the biggest players gobbling up everything. Just the top four hyperscalers alone (Microsoft, AWS, Google/Alphabet, Meta) spent over $125 Billion last year on data center infrastructure. Add to that the entire rest of the global technology and business world and you’ll find that the equipment needed to build a data center has ridiculously long delivery timelines.

Whether they are end-users, clouds, or colocation providers, even the companies with the most robust procurement programs have an 18-month wait from ordering a generator to taking delivery. Switchgear, battery-room infrastructure, CRAC units, and other necessary big-ticket infrastructure items have similar timelines. And those are for the largest consumers, with top-level credit in established multi-billion dollar contracts.

If your company engages in significant construction projects, maybe you have a relationship that could get you the power infrastructure you need for a smaller data center.  But you better plan in advance, as there are wait times of 24-36 months for “normal” companies.

Purpose-Built Data Center Infrastructure is Ready:  Direct LTx has invested $20+ million in upgraded, modernized, resilient data center infrastructure.  As a result, our data center is successfully serving data center colocation customers right now, right here in Pennsylvania, and is ready for more enterprises in need of a high-availability data center option. 

Build a Data Center?  Colocation?  Cloud?   More information about colocation, public cloud, and building your own data center is contained in 8 Key Questions for Every IT Decision-Maker, a white paper authored by Direct LTx. It covers all the options your company has for the infrastructure you need to thrive in the fast-changing tech world we live in.   

The white paper is subtitled “Will Your Data Center and Cloud Strategy Propel Your Organization to Success or Leave You Behind the Times in Our Challenging Market?,” which is a question we should all be asking ourselves given the rapid change around us.  You can read it here.