Let’s be clear here; there is almost no slowdown in the data center market. In fact, research from Jones Lang LaSalle indicates that mergers and acquisitions (M&A) in the data center sector surged in 2016, a trend that is on pace to continue through 2017 and beyond. The report shows that the data center industry continues to thrive, and expects that trend to continue regardless of the speed of macroeconomic growth. For example, absorption rates have reached record highs, with 357.85 MW in the top U.S. markets and 46.3 in the top Canadian markets, highlighting the still-rampant momentum. The thirst for data will continue even if the broader economy slows.

Data Will Always Have a Home

The modern data center continues to be a central hub for new, emerging technologies.  A recent report from Infoholic Research describes the growth of the global data center cooling market as expansive. According to the report, this level of growth fuels the need to improve overall efficiency in data centers in all areas. From emerging data centers in the tropical and temperate zones, the exponential growth of structured and unstructured data, the need to reduce excessive heat generated due to increased data center power densities, and to increased demand for eco-friendly and cost-effective data centers.

Their report indicates that excessive power consumption is a major restraining factor in the data center cooling market, as cooling systems consume almost 40% of the electricity supplied to data centers.

Just How Big Will the Cooling Market Become?

The growing construction of data centers is one of the primary drivers aiding the growth of the data center cooling solutions market. The demand for data centers is mostly emerging from large enterprises, CSPs, government agencies, and telecommunication organizations, which are due to the adoption of advanced technologies such as cloud-based services and big data analytics for operational business needs. Thus, the growing demand for data centers will expedite the demand for data center cooling solutions, thereby, leading to market growth.

The latest study from Markets and Markets shows the cooling market in data centers is estimated to grow from $7.12 Billion in 2016 to $14.28 Billion by 2021, at a CAGR of 14.95%. The study also indicates that factors such as the growing need to improve processing capabilities, reduce the heat generated by increased data center power densities, and focus on developing cost-effective and green data center solutions are also driving the market.

New Demands Mean More Cooling Requirements

Let me give you an example – high-performance computing (HPC). Today, HPC is a fast-moving trend that is pushing the growth of the data center cooling solutions market. Today, the introduction of big data and cloud computing has increased the demand for data centers among enterprises and government agencies as they support more cloud, big data, analytics, and HPC use-cases.

Soon, there will be even more technologies which impact cooling requirements. Solutions around AI, machine learning, more data analytics, and IoT will all continue to require more from their data center hosts. The big question here is how does all of this affect you?

Keeping Up with Cooling

In this blog alone, we have discussed many of the various ways that data center cooling solutions will continue to grow. Numerous reports indicate that organizations are looking at cooling as a critical part of their data center strategy. Too often, we leave cooling as an afterthought during the design or deployment process. Data center cooling must be at the forefront of your design considerations to achieve optimal cooling efficiency.

The way your data center breathes, airflow to be exact, can change the way you deploy racks, servers, and even HPC components. You must give serious consideration to how floor, rack, aisle, room, and facility design and deployment impacts airflow effectiveness. In fact, excellent partners aim to combine these solutions to make the entire process fundamentally simpler. The installation of new types of active monitoring solutions across network closets, server rooms, enterprise data centers, and in hyper-scale architectures are useful improvements.

The point here isn’t to just assume cooling will work itself out. There are some excellent reasons organizations are investing in advanced cooling solutions. The ROI is fantastic. Over the course of the life of your data center, your cooling infrastructure’s efficiency can help you significantly reduce operating costs. So, whether you are looking to expand, renew, or build a new data center architecture, consider the best cooling options for your data center to run more optimally, and much more economically