 Welcome to JSA TV, where we're covering the latest stories, trends, and innovations from leaders in global connectivity, digital infrastructure, and the networks within. We are coming to you live from Times Square, New York City, at DCD Connect 2024, and I'm here with Mr. Steve Lewis. Steve is the VP of U.S. Sales for Echo Sense, a rapidly growing SaaS company leader reimagining the future of operational performance. Did I get all of that right, Steve? You nailed it. That's exactly what we do. Outstanding. So why don't you tell our viewers a little bit more about Echo Sense and what brings you to the show today? Yeah, you bet. So Echo Sense is a data center optimization software company. We've been around for about 10 years. We specialize in helping data center professionals optimize their environment from a power and a cooling perspective. We also are working with data center professionals to really extend the useful life of the infrastructure in their data center. So the perimeter infrastructure like your air conditioning units, some of the larger power infrastructure, and then really providing granular data at the rack level so that we can then use machine learning, AI, to make some optimization recommendations to really improve the efficiency and also reduce risk within the data center. We've been around, as I mentioned, for 10 years. We've deployed our systems globally. We've got literally thousands of sites that are utilizing our software today. We're monitoring and managing. If you break it down to a rack level, hundreds of thousands of racks, and really billions of data points, all of that data feeds in and really drives what that machine learning and AI does from an optimization perspective. So we've got a low-bust data lake, if you will, to really give us the experience that we need to make the optimization happen in the data center. I couldn't have segue to my next question any better, Steve. We don't let anybody escape the interview today without talking about AI, and you are no different. So why don't we talk a little bit about AI optimization within the data center and why it is so critical today? Yeah, absolutely. I think if I could share just some kind of mind-numbing numbers. Let's do it. So the typical EchoSense customer, after they've deployed our system and leveraged our AI and optimization tools, they see about a 30% reduction in the costs associated with cooling their data center. So very significant. That's for real. Right? The other thing that we find is they're only utilizing about 40% of the available cooling, yet they're still experiencing airflow challenges. So what that tells us is they're stranded capacities, right? It's not without the best intentions, but ultimately, there's some inefficiencies within the data center. And so what we do very well is we help to visualize what was unvisualizable, if that's even a word, right? It is today. Right now. Yeah, right now. TM. So it gives you the ability to not only look at temperature, but really to understand the distribution of airflow, right? How are these air handling units performing? How does it relate to outside air if we're looking at, you know, the temperature in the environment? Can we see seasonal changes? Can we see changes when we're ramping up, processing? All of those things, we can help bring to light for a data center professional. We help to provide capacity planning tools. So not just do I have space? Do I have power? Do I have cooling? Because those are relatively easy based on nameplate readings. But ultimately, you want to understand in this environment, if I put a rack here that's 15 kilowatts, I know I've got power coming from a UPS or a PDU, whatever the distribution path may be. But from an airflow perspective, am I delivering enough CFM and cold air to that space? Because we do the machine learning and the AI, we can understand not just how that rack units behave, the air handling units behave, but what's their zone of influence? How far do they reach? What happens when once cycles off the other, where does the load get picked up? So we give the operational awareness that people are really looking forward to say, OK, I can add load here. This would be a good place to do it. And then again, the environment is always changing. So traditionally, if you wanted to optimize, maybe bring in an engineering team and they'd say, OK, you need to deploy containment. You need to put in blanking panels or change some things around. But if you're constantly seeing changes in the environment from a rack deployment perspective, you've got internal customers bringing in new servers, it's a dynamic environment. You want to be able to optimize on the fly without commissioning somebody out. That's what we do with our cooling advisor tool, which is a native solution within Echo SOF. I love it. I'm going to go off script just for a moment because I'm fascinated by this conversation. And it is because the more people I speak to today, the more I see that every little bit counts. Everyone has a place and together in aggregate, it is a massive difference maker, whether it be cabling solutions within the data center and everything that you all are doing with all of the variables that are impacting the data center and how to monitor those and optimize those for greater efficiency and sustainability. And we talk about this, but it isn't just about, as you said, the space and the power and the cooling. All very important. But there's a myriad of things that ultimately contribute to the successful implementation of a more efficient, more sustainable data center. And you guys are such a big part of that. So anyway, I would love to hear from you. As far as some of the numbers that you've already thrown out, where do you foresee this going? Yeah, that's a great question. I think you're probably talking to a lot of people here about, I've got a plan for AI. That's right. And there's a lot of vendors here that do things very well from a directed to chip cooling perspective, immersion cooling, liquid cooling, all of those things. But ultimately, the infrastructure that's going to support this new technology, most people don't know if it's ready. It's legacy. That's it. Yeah. And so what we're seeing is if we're finding stranded capacities, then we can prolong that decision to build or to make massive changes to the infrastructure. So you have to have eyes on everything. And it's not just monitoring the inherent telemetry of the device, but it's leveraging machine learning. How does it behave in this environment with all the interdependencies between power and cooling systems? You have to have a full picture to see it all, to really understand, OK, I can safely outload this site. Because if we're being frank, no one's going to deploy 50kW racks across an entire enterprise data center. It's just not going to happen at least anytime soon. But they're going to have high density zones, right? And so how do we plan for that? That's a different story than an entire enterprise of high density. So we're really looking at, again, extending the useful life of the facility and managing risk, reducing risk, providing visualizations, predictability. Those are things that we're doing very well with our software. Yeah. I mean, that's where it feels like it's going. It's like, what can we do right now to make sure that what we're going to do in the future is meaningful? Yeah. And I love that story. But anyway, so anyway, thank you for indulging me. I appreciate that. But let's talk about a new product of yours, EchoSim. You want to talk a little bit about that? Yeah. So EchoSim, I think the conversation that we're having bleeds right into what EchoSim does. EchoSim is really that. That was intentional. Yeah, that's great. That's good. You're good at this. You've done it before. So EchoSim really provides a data center operator, a safe environment, a sandbox, where they can run through all of the what-if scenarios, right? So it helps them to understand what's the optimal way to leverage the infrastructure in the environment. If they've got plans to deploy another 100 kilowatts of load, you can plug that in and say, OK, where are the bottlenecks, right? I think, at first pass, we don't have enough power. But ultimately, it's going to show you the impact from a cooling perspective on the chillers on the air handling units. It'll give you the ability to do failover scenarios. So if I drop my A side, is my redundancy strategy sound? Am I really going to be able to do this? And so it's a whole simulation tool that really helps even engineering folks, right, to determine well, how's the best way to build out a new data center? How's is the best way to build out another room within an existing data center? What infrastructure is going to need to be replaced and when, right? So all of those tools reside in this EchoSim product. Fantastic. In the PR marketing business, we're always talking about establishing best practices. What's working? What isn't working? EchoSim sounds like that's the sandbox to establish those best practices to make sure that it's worked, to make sure that the results are meaningful. Exactly. You hit it exactly on the head. That's what EchoSim does. I love it. I love it. And Steve, thank you so much for being with us. I appreciate it very much. Absolutely. Thank you. And thank you viewers for watching JSA TV. Stay curious and keep networking and we'll see you soon.