Artificial Intelligence

Colt reveals growth opportunities for partners with AI and on-demand

Colt Technology Services has published research revealing new opportunities for partners, as IT leaders look for support and knowledge on AI and intelligent infrastructure. The research, revealed in the latest version of Colt’s annual Digital Infrastructure report, highlights growth opportunities for partners selling technologies critical to AI adoption and digital infrastructure. Technologies rated ‘absolutely essential’ to AI rollout are named as 5G (cited by 22%), agile connectivity (20%) and edge (20%). The study also outlines opportunities for partners selling consumption-based networks, as global uncertainty drives businesses to build flex into their organisations. Colt’s survey of 755 IT leaders across countries in Europe and Asia revealed enterprises are seeking to expand their knowledge of AI and intelligent infrastructure through a diversity of different partners. About 34% are turning to SaaS providers; one in three (33%) to hardware vendors; and 32% to connectivity partners or systems integrators. Also, 31% look to consultants for advice and 29% to CSPs. The study reveals continued take-up of on-demand connectivity, with one in five (20%) saying it is absolutely essential to their business and 76% saying it is important to some extent. Almost nine in 10 (89%) survey respondents who have aspects of intelligent digital infrastructure are already using or plan to use on-demand connectivity. Opportunities for partners to provide support and guidance to clients and end users on their intelligent infrastructure journeys were also uncovered, as many IT leaders surveyed admitted they’re not maximising their entire digital infrastructure estate. The highest proportion (17%) felt they were only at 70% capacity in terms of the functionality and features they’re already using. The research also highlights pain points between IT leaders and partners with almost one in five respondents (19%) saying relationships with external partners are their biggest obstacle and more than one in four (28%) naming poor integration, as a barrier to the easy management of digital infrastructure. And 34% said a lack of partner APIs held them back.  Download the report here.

Rise of AI to drive growth for Nordic data centre market

The data centre market in the Nordics is primed for exponential growth as a result of the acceleration of AI, according to CBRE. AI and machine learning (ML) technologies have experienced unprecedented adoption levels in 2023 and these wide-scale, digital business transformations are fuelling demand for data centre infrastructure as a result. New research from CBRE suggests that much of this demand can be satisfied in the Nordics, primarily due to the low-cost power availability and leading sustainability credentials in the region. There is an abundance of low-cost hydropower available and with the inherently cold climate, there is minimal need to use additional power to cool equipment. CBRE predicts that the Nordics will account for 8% of all colocation data centre supply in Europe by the end of 2023, a sharp year-on-year increase from 5% in 2022, with many locations in the region set to benefit from increased hyperscaler demand. According to the research, Norway’s data centre capacity is expected to more than double by the end of 2026 to 500MW, compared to the projected 210MW at the end of 2023. Furthermore, CBRE predicts that Stockholm’s data centre capacity will almost double by the end of 2026 to 136MW. Stockholm, alongside Oslo and Copenhagen, already forms part of Europe’s 20 largest data centre markets, with further growth expected as customers with large scale requirements look to the Nordics to fulfil demand. Much of the new capacity will be absorbed by the hyperscale operators, but significant opportunities exist for colocation vendors to develop new purpose-build facilities, according to the research.

CoreWeave, NVIDIA, VAST Data join forces to build AI data centres

VAST Data and CoreWeave have announced a strategic partnership that will further CoreWeave’s mission to deliver highly scalable and performant cloud infrastructure for AI and accelerated compute workloads. CoreWeave has selected the VAST Data Platform to build a global, NVIDIA-powered accelerated computing cloud for deploying, managing and securing hundreds of petabytes of data for generative AI, high performance computing (HPC) and visual effects (VFX) workloads. CoreWeave did extensive research and testing before selecting VAST Data to power all of its data centres. The VAST Data Platform has the necessary scale, performance, and multi-tenant enterprise AI cloud capabilities required to power the massive AI and LLM training and inference applications that are now transforming everything from business to science, and society itself. Through their joint partnership, CoreWeave and VAST Data are leveraging NVIDIA technology to engineer a new data platform architecture for large-scale, end-to-end data pipelines and deliver next-generation data services for AI workloads. To support this, the VAST Data Platform boasts an enterprise network attached data store that is certified for use with NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD, and eliminates tiers and infrastructure silos to make large scale AI simpler, faster and easier to manage at virtually limitless levels of scale and performance.

Launch of Europe’s $1bn NVIDIA GPU AI Supercloud

NexGen Cloud has announced plans and funding for one of Europe’s first AI Supercloud deployments to support the development and growth of AI enterprises.  An elite member of the NVIDIA Partner Network, it plans to invest $1bn to build its AI Supercloud in Europe, with $576 million already committed in hardware orders with suppliers. The AI Supercloud will provide a dedicated compute-intensive platform for Europe’s technology companies, organisations and governments, enabling them to execute sensitive AI applications and research within the European jurisdiction and privacy laws. It is set to begin deployment in October 2023, and it will also help meet increasing demand for accelerated computing, spurred by the technology industry’s growing interest in using generative AI and other applications to drive innovation and improve efficiency. It will also ensure regional and cost-effective access to GPU cloud services for European enterprises and scale-ups.  NexGen Cloud’s AI Supercloud services will be delivered from European data centres, powered exclusively by 100% renewable energy, supporting industries including healthcare, finance, and media and entertainment.  It will eventually consist of more than 20,000 NVIDIA H100 Tensor Core GPUs by June 2024, providing enterprises with access to one of the world’s most powerful GPU-accelerated platforms.  To help with the financing, NexGen Cloud has partnered with Moore and Moore Investments Group (MMI) and created a dedicated fund, which has attracted investment from their private investors. Access to the AI Supercloud over the next 12 months will be provided through NexGen Cloud’s Hyperstack platform. The company is already taking pre-orders for its first deployment in October.

The critical role of cloud strategy in driving business innovation

HCLTech has launched a new report providing compelling insights into how organisations can overcome key obstacles like security concerns, talent gaps and company culture to maximise the business impact of their cloud investments. Titled 'Cloud Evolution: Make Innovation a Habit', the report is based on a survey of 500 senior business and technology leaders across industries. The report revealed that while 73% of executives believe their companies are only beginning to leverage the potential of cloud, over 90% recognise cloud’s vital role in enabling rapid response to critical business events, strategic pivots and adopting leading-edge technologies like AI. Cloud continues to enable businesses to pivot when faced with new and unforeseen challenges. As high as 87% of the respondents in the survey said that they would not have been able to make significant pivots last year without cloud. Businesses are relying on cloud to meet sustainability goals (91%), to work through pandemic-related staffing and supply chain issues (87%) and mitigate the impact of rising inflation (77%), showed the survey. “Cloud is rapidly becoming the optimal business platform for innovation at scale,” says Kalyan Kumar, Global Chief Technology Officer and Head – Ecosystems, HCLTech. “However, many companies have yet to fully tap into its potential. This report offers a blueprint for developing the right cloud strategy to drive competitive advantage.” The respondents agreed that innovative technologies like Gen AI and cloud go hand-in-hand. Of the respondents, 58% noted that businesses have increased or are planning to increase investments in Gen AI and 85% believe it is only possible with the right cloud strategy. Both IT leaders (86%) and business leaders (81%) agree that they closely collaborate with one another to discuss cloud strategy to unlock their potential to innovate. However, 73% of the survey participants said that their business is only just beginning to unlock the potential of cloud. Nearly a third of the senior executives (32%) said that a lack of alignment and collaboration between business and technology departments is an obstacle to achieving their business goals. “Forward-thinking leaders recognise that cloud is no longer just an infrastructure play but rather a transformational business platform,” says Siki Giunta, Executive Vice President, CloudSMART and Industry Consulting, HCLTech. “By following the recommendations in this report, organisations can truly unleash cloud’s potential to accelerate growth and resilience.” To make innovation through cloud a norm, the report advises companies to leverage cloud’s agility, shape their organisation’s culture around cloud, break down departmental barriers, increase cloud literacy and tightly align cloud strategy with AI and other emerging technology adoption plans. HCLTech’s CloudSMART strategy ensures meaningful business outcomes from clients’ cloud investments. Industry expertise across all segments forms the HCLTech cloud offering and highly automated services increase agile implementation of modern cloud best practices. Readers can view the full research report here: https://www.hcltech.com/cloud-research.

atNorth announces shortlist selection for the Energy Awards

atNorth has announced that its Sweden data centre is on the shortlist for the ‘Physical Technology of the Year – Heating and Cooling’ category at the 2023 Energy Awards. atNorth’s SWE01 data centre launched in 2022 and is specifically designed for high-density workloads, such as advanced calculations for AI, simulations, and risk analysis. It is one of the world’s first +10MW data centres with a primary cooling system designed for heat recovery. This enables 85% of the electricity used in the DC to be captured and passed on as heat to the district heating system. This residual heat can heat up to 20,000 homes.  The entry showcased the company's strategic alliance with CoolIT. Its bespoke cooling system further enhanced the existing infrastructure cooling process for its high-density servers, significantly improving overall data centre efficiency.atNorth now operates six Nordic data centres, following the launch of its third site in Iceland, ICE03, and with a seventh site due to open in Finland in 2024. The business is committed to building best in class data centres to meet the continued demand for energy efficient, data-intensive computing.  “We are delighted that our innovative data centre design has been shortlisted by the Energy Award judges,” says Steve Donovan, Chief Development Officer, atNorth. “As the environmental and economic advantages of our services continue to gain traction in the industry, we are thrilled to be recognised for the quality of our offering.”The Energy Awards aim to celebrate the energy industry’s innovations and achievements in best practice, business excellence and industry collaboration.

Omdia: The data centre market is healthy and ready for AI demand

The recent explosion of high-profile AI successes and investment announcements has captured the attention and imagination of the business world. In light of the latest AI media frenzy, new research from Omdia reveals that the data centre market has a heightened awareness of practical applications for AI that promise to improve productivity and lower costs. The collective evidence so far says this will not just be another flash in the pan. Colocation businesses, including both multi-tenant and single tenant data centre providers, are expected to be riding this wave of new AI growth. Some of these companies have adapted their data centre designs to enable higher rack power density. The power consumption of servers configured for AI training is akin to high-performance computing (HPC) clusters for scientific research. “The colocation providers able to provide the highest rack densities and access to liquid cooling will now have the upper hand in the market for data centre space,” says, Alan Howard, Principal Analyst at Omdia. Research from Omdia projects continued strong growth in the colocation market and it’s likely the proliferation of AI hardware will be an added tailwind to growth. The colocation industry is quite healthy and is expected to reach $65.2bn in 2027, with a five year growth CAGR of 9.4%, according to Omdia’s Colocation Services Tracker - 2023. Depending on how the acceleration in AI hardware deployments materialises, colocation data centre revenue could get a significant boost over the next few years. The top three colocation service providers in the world are Equinix, Digital Realty, and NTT Global Data Centres (NTT GDC). Between them, they operate over 700 data centres and have over 100 construction projects underway as covered in Omdia’s Data Centre Building Tracker – 1H23. These three companies represent 33% of the total 2022 revenue of $41.6bn, according to Omdia’s Colocation Services Tracker - 2023. Not all data centres can handle AI or HPC equipment, but these companies and numerous other noteworthy colocation service providers have been anticipating this emerging growth trend. Data centres built over the last couple years and many of those under construction, have been designed and architected to accommodate these high-power density equipment racks. These data centre design and architecture properties include high-density power distribution management and precision cooling for thermal management to protect servers. In some cases, colocation customers require direct to chip liquid cooling, which requires special data centre plumbing designs to provide customers access to a liquid cooling loop, or the option to install immersion cooling tanks where the hottest servers are sunken into a bath of non-conductive fluids. Alan concludes, “Achieving these advanced data centre operating characteristics are not for the faint of heart or those companies with an aversion to high capital expenditures (capex). Colocation companies like Equinix, Digital Realty, NTT GDC, Flexential, DataBank, Compass, Aligned, Iron Mountain, and a host of others are in the business of taking that capital risk to build data centres so that enterprises and cloud service providers don’t have to.”

Revealed: DTX + UCX 2023 full line-up

From decades in the making to overnight impact, nobody was prepared for how quickly generative AI landed. But businesses can be ready for the next chapter with the right skills, architecture and operational design. Enter DTX + UCX Europe 2023 to unite the UK's top IT and digital professionals and tech innovators on 4 - 5 October.  Across 18 content stages, the programme helps IT leaders and their teams build an essential roadmap to navigate the AI-dominated realm of opportunity and the risk landscape that comes with it.  Interactive panels, case studies and fireside chats will welcome leaders from major organisations like TikTok, M&S, Lloyds, DWP, Tesco, DreamWorks and Gousto, whilst headline speakers like Lastminute.com's Founder, Baroness Martha Lane Fox; comedian and TV presenter, Dara Ó Briain; renowned social engineer and 'people hacker', Jenny Radcliffe; and former distinguished engineer at Google Cloud, Kelsey Hightower, will also be taking to the stage.  Here’s a sneak peek of some of the sessions you can expect to see at the show: One of the opening panels encourages attendees to 'twist and shout', exploring how to change the digital narrative from cost-centre to value-creator with brands including ITV, Meta, PWC and The British Army featured. Another stand-out session titled, 'Reality Check', brings together the Ministry of Justice, CDIO, Gina Gill, with Jon Townsend, CIO of the National Trust, to discuss the steps organisations should take today to prepare for a more intelligent and immersive tomorrow. Followed up by UCL professor, Hannah Fry, who will take audiences on a tour of technology to analyse what advancements lie around the corner.  Elsewhere, Natwest’s Head of Engineering for Commercial and Institutional Banking, Angela De Wet Johnson, will present on how to modernise IT to meet evolving customer expectations and tech advancements, whilst Astrazeneca’s Global Head of Enterprise Architecture, Dinesh Krishnan, and Deputy Director at the Princess Alexandra Hospital, NHS Trust, Jeffrey Wood, will discuss best practice in sourcing, integrating and driving value from technology platforms and partnerships. More real-life case studies will take place across the breakout stages, including E.ON’s tips and tricks for operationalising IT in the cloud; Deep Green’s deep dive into how data centres are saving UK swimming pools; Norwegian Customs’ exploration of ethics in social engineering; and a cinematic presentation from Pen Test Partners proving why movies get plane hacking all wrong.  Further sessions will showcase long-term customer retention strategies and the role of technology from L’Oreal and Experian’s heads of customer experience; Great Ormond Street Hospital's DRIVE technical lead sharing a case study on innovation in clinical informatics; and a debate on monoliths vs microservices in the quest for cost-optimised architecture featuring AWS and former GCP engineer. If that's not enough to justify the time out of the day job, DTX + UCX has also announced a partnership with Every Child Online for 2023, a charity that supports children and disadvantaged young people by professionally refurbishing old laptops/PCs and supplying them to schools in deprived areas and charitable organisations for free.  The full line-up and event agenda is now live on the websites DTX Europe and UC EXPO. Save the dates of 4 - 5 October and register online here. 

NordVPN to boost innovation in experimental technologies

NordVPN has announced the launch of NordLabs – a platform for experimental projects and cutting-edge innovations. It will explore emerging technologies, such as AI, to create new tools and services. "New emerging technologies raise challenges for cybersecurity, privacy, and internet freedom, but at the same time, they bring new opportunities. NordLabs will allow us to have additional flexibility when it comes to the development of experimental tools and services. We do not expect all projects appearing in NordLabs will later become fully maintained standalone products, but we are thrilled about the opportunity to curb cutting-edge technologies for better internet," says Vykintas Maknickas, Head of Product Strategy at Nord Security. NordLabs will work in two main directions. First, it will provide a broader space for NordVPN's team of engineers and developers to experiment with new ideas and emerging technologies and encourage creative thinking to explore novel approaches to online privacy and security. Secondly, the platform will allow early adopters and tech enthusiasts to gain exclusive access to innovative projects before they become mainstream. To access upcoming experimental projects, users must register on the waiting list. Once new experimental projects are released, registered users can test and provide feedback on features and services developed by NordVPN. The first experimental NordLabs products are planned to be released in September. They will include a machine learning-based tool that will help internet users better identify phishing emails, and a tool to distinguish AI-generated images from those created through traditional means.

Speakers from the Vatican and NASA to headline at Data Summit

Speakers from the Vatican and NASA are amongst a line-up confirmed for The Data Lab’s flagship event, Data Summit 2023. Data Summit is part of Scotland’s data and AI event, DataFest, a festival of innovation dedicated to showcasing the world’s foremost voices in data and AI. The 2023 event has been titled, 'The AI Renaissance: how is it shaping the human experience?­', and in a time where artificial intelligence is at the forefront of public discourse, it will explore how the technology is impacting all areas of our lives – from culture to net zero, privacy to disinformation, and religion to space travel. Taking place at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre (EICC) on 2 and 3 November, Data Summit is set to bring together some of the leading data scientists, thought leaders, journalists and artists from across industry, public sector, and academia to share their advanced knowledge on the new age of data and AI innovation. Among a distinguished list of delegates, it will welcome Paolo Benanti, AI Advisor to the Vatican, and Katherine Rahill, Senior Scientist of NASA’s Human Research Division at Johnson Space Centre, to headline keynotes at the two-day conference. Other confirmed speakers for the event include: CEO and Co-Founder of Code First Girls, Anna Brailsford, who will be taking part in a fireside chat with Chief Commercial Officer of Strathclyde University, Gillian Docherty. Astrodynamicist and Space Environmentalist, Moriba Jah, who, alongside his work laying the foundation for a safe, prosperous and sustainable near-Earth space environment, is also a MacArthur Fellow, National Geographic Explorer, TED Fellow, Global Space Evangelist, Professor and Spacecraft Navigator. Colin Jarvis, applied AI solutions architect for EMEA at leading AI company, OpenAI will keynote. Professor in the Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies at the University of Tokyo, Yuko Itatsu, who also serves as a Director for the B’AI Global Forum. Associate Professor in Philosophy at the Institute for Ethics in AI and author of the highly acclaimed economist book, ‘Privacy is Power’, Carissa Véliz. Tim Gregory, Nuclear Chemist for the National Nuclear Laboratory, who is also a public speaker, freelance writer, educator and science advocate. Broadcaster and genomics expert, Vivienne Parry, who hosts medical programmes for BBC Radio 4, writes widely on health, and presents films. She is also known to facilitate high-level conferences and train young researchers. Journalist and disinformation researcher, Olga Tokariuk, who has written for international media titles. DataFest will host a series of fringe events running from 24 October - 9 November, allowing industry and academic professionals to learn, network and explore some of the latest advancements in this technology. The events will take place across the UK and around the world, online and in-person, and will feature some of the world’s leading technology organisations including Meta and SENSE (Centre for Satellite Data and Environmental Science). Gordon Johnstone, Head of DataFest at The Data Lab, says, “Innovations in data and AI are moving at an unprecedented pace and the world is undergoing a complete technological rebirth. This year’s Data Summit agenda will explore what lies ahead for data and AI through various lenses to reveal the challenges and opportunities afforded by these exciting developments. By creating a programme that highlights all the ways these ground-breaking technologies can impact our lives, we hope to demonstrate how they can change humanity for the better.” “We pride ourselves on the unparalleled experience Data Summit has to offer, as it allows attendees to not only network with a variety of thought leaders in the field but will allow the chance to build communities with other like-minded professionals. With this year’s list of high-calibre speakers, the event is set to be the biggest, boldest Data Summit of its time as we welcome the Vatican, NASA, OpenAI, nuclear chemists, genomics experts, professors, astrodynamicists, journalists and broadcasters to inspire and drive positive change in our audience.” Tickets for the event are available on the DataFest website.