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Transitioning to a digital space on short notice is never easy. But it’s a unique challenge when you’re the world’s largest organizer of data center industry events.

We were lucky enough to spend some time with George Rockett of Data Center Dynamics as he prepared to relaunch the company’s live event calendar in Q4 of 2021. We asked him about the early days of his industry experience, and how he got into the market.

Data Center Services in the Early Days

George got into the market when the space was relatively new. Back in 1997, he was working in marketing. He and his DCD co-founder Dan Scarbrough had the opportunity to sell data center space. At first they were treating it like ad space, but that didn't quite work.

So they did their research and eventually became experts on the subject. Not wanting that knowledge to go to waste, they set up a magazine called CoLo Network Europe in an effort to educate the public about the emerging colocation market. In the process, they helped create the vocabulary to describe what was going on in the industry.

By 2002 the two of them started to put on their own events, which was a massive catalyst to their overall success. DCD became synonymous with data center services conventions, and the rest was history.

Specialization in Data Center Services

We asked about the most popular topics that people have been asking about in 2021.

George said that the industry can be quite specialized, so the requests that they hear can be diverse. But in general, people want to talk about future trends.

2030 is a key year for many countries and organizations: Carbon neutral trends and other power usage concerns are forcing big changes in the workplace. But some of the technologies that will be required to achieve those goals aren't quite ready for implementation yet.

Another popular topic is density, which so often is connected to rack space and cooling capacity. But the boundaries on capacity are constantly being pushed. Which leads to the discussion of risk aversion within the industry, and the willingness to adopt some of these new technologies and techniques.

We asked how the vendor community has been adjusting. George didn’t have hard statistics, but gave a gut feeling on that subject. Massive vendors who spend hundreds of millions on R&D are adjusting just fine. But there are a huge slew of specialist companies, smaller and more focused. These dedicated suppliers grow as the industry grows, and they need to contend with the risk aversion endemic to data center services.

Colocation is spreading around the world, and regional tech variance is lessening. The solutions chosen need to scale very quickly. The complete industrialization of the data center is a threat to the small actors. If they go away then less independent, less innovative thought might be the result. The industry needs to focus on helping the best smaller companies to scale, in order to keep innovation and quality levels high.