Closing keynote: What will the data centre landscape look like in 5-10 years?

Data centres are undergoing one of the biggest design shifts in their history. The rise of AI, high-performance computing (HPC), and real-time applications is pushing infrastructure beyond traditional limits. Power consumption is rapidly increasing, driven largely by AI workloads. Rack densities are rising from ~5–15 kW to 100+ kW and beyond. Future data centres won’t just be bigger—they will be fundamentally different in architecture, cooling, power, and operation. 

This session will consider: 

• Design implication of rack densities reaching hundreds of kW – How will we develop integrated infrastructure; compute + cooling + power built together? 

• Will data centres look more like power plants with compute attached? 

• Speed and scalability –Will we see deployment in 8–12 months through incremental scaling and pod-based architecture? 

• Growth of micro / edge data centres 

• Will data centres be largely autonomous systems?