ZTE Corporation, a Chinese multinational telecommunications equipment and systems company, showcased its AI-embedded solution for data centre infrastructure at Data Centre World Frankfurt 2025.
As artificial intelligence becomes deeply integrated into every layer of enterprise and cloud computing, the foundation of digital infrastructure is undergoing a fundamental transformation. Speaking at the event, Hans Neff, Senior Director of the CTO Group at ZTE, delivered a keynote address that challenged traditional efficiency metrics and static data centre models. He emphasised that in an AI-driven future, conventional benchmarks such as Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) are “no longer sufficient” to measure the performance and adaptability of modern data centres.
In his address, Hans highlighted the paradox facing today’s data centres: at the very moment when sustainability has become a strategic priority, AI is driving up compute intensity and energy demand at an unprecedented scale. He believes traditional benchmarks, originally designed for static, legacy systems, are no longer capable of capturing the complexity and dynamism of AI-driven workloads. “AI workloads are fundamentally different,” says Hans. “They’re denser, hotter, and more variable. To stay ahead, we can’t keep optimising for a world that no longer exists.”
ZTE says its approach, drawn from global deployments and internal R&D, envisions energy efficiency not as a fixed target, but as an evolving system. The company states that it is engineering data centres that sense, predict, and respond to changing computational demands in real time.
In his keynote address, Hans also called on the industry to adopt more holistic metrics that better reflect the realities of modern data environments. He proposed a new composite framework that evaluates energy use not only by its efficiency, but also by its effectiveness in supporting intelligent operations, resiliency, and sustainability. “PUE is no longer enough,” argues Hans. “We need smarter metrics that account for how power is used — not just how much.”
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