What appears to be a persuasive argument on paper does not always translate into enthusiastic adoption. A clear example of this is liquid cooling, which has seen slow take-up in data centres despite its clear advantages in terms of thermal efficiency and energy savings.

Air cooling remains the dominant method due to its lower upfront costs, ease of implementation and long established infrastructure. However, the high levels of heat generated by artificial intelligence (AI) and high performance computing means that air cooling alone is increasingly insufficient.

Given that the direction of travel is clear, data centre operators still appear hesitant to shift to liquid cooling. In this issue’s Question Time we’ve asked a specially selected panel of industry experts to offer their views on the subject and suggest what can be done to drive up adoption of this innovative technology.

As digital transformation continues apace there is increasing need for compute power at the edge. It continues to be a massive industry talking point and with applications for AI at the edge growing, Steven Carlini of Schneider Electric examines how existing expertise and capability in the industry can overcome the challenges it presents. Steven is joined by Chris Wellfair of Secure IT Environments (SITE), who offers some tips on choosing and deploying micro data centres.

We also have a special feature dedicated to enterprise and data centre security and access control, comprising two excellent articles. In the first, Mark Green of LMG looks at how smart building access control technology now protects people as well as places. In the second, Paul Richardson of Stellium Datacenters explains why achieving the right blend of physical, technical and human security is the only way to provide a consistently safe and controlled data centre environment.

Rob Shepherd 
Editor