 Welcome to JSA TV and JSA Podcasts, the newsroom for telecom and data center professionals. I'm John Markleam and joining me today from London is Jonas Kano, director of EMEA and APAC at Airdale International. Jonas, thank you so much for talking to me. I was just saying that we haven't spoken to each other for nearly three years. I mean, how are you? I'm very well. Conceiving the crazy things that's been going on due to the pandemic and what have you. Yeah, well that's good to hear. But look, the pandemic has brought as much as many challenges as it has brought opportunities as well for this industry. And I think we all agree that the industry has embraced them quite well. What would you say has been a couple of interesting things that you've seen changing over the last 12 18 months in the data center space. I think it's quite interesting because for, I would say, three to five years prior to the pandemic, everybody's been talking about transformation, 5G, all the various things about IOTs and what have you and the potential. And it seems that the pandemic itself has just forced that potential through. So one of the real changes we're seeing is companies are re-evaluating actually what do we do about digital transformation. It's a reality. Because everybody's forced from working from home and working on Zoom just like we're talking on Zoom now. A lot of companies are thinking we need to make this a reality and we're seeing the fruits of that implementation as we speak. It makes sense and I guess this is not going to go away either once we are over the pandemic. No, I think it's a catalyst. Aside from the whole health scenario, from an IT perspective, from a data center perspective, digital transformation, I think this is the big catalyst that there's almost before pandemic and after post pandemic. And so they're not going to go away. I think it would accelerate already with the big rollout of 5G. And with the movement that electric cars are making the market, which is an edge into that driverless car dream, which Tesla is pushing. You can see that the basic infrastructure for the new world, the new digital reality, is being put in place now. Well, and first, it's good to see that all this infrastructure has been recognized now as critical infrastructure, almost everywhere in the world, especially in Europe. We've seen it really being spoken about by governments and we've seen data since being put down as critical infrastructure, which is really good. We've literally frogged an entire decade in the space of 12 months. But with this as well, I mean, of course, we leapfrogged a decade, more data center power is all requires also more power and cooling. What have you seen? What have you seen within the cooling space in the data center? Change. It's an interesting question because there's been, as you know, there's always been a lot of talk of new cooling technologies, whether it's liquid cooling or what have you. But I think from a technology progress perspective, not much has changed. What has changed is the massive increase in deployment. I think what's driving this is, you know, you have hyperscale companies, which obviously are moving very quickly, you have technical real estate companies. And they are businesses that have particular business needs. And the pandemic and all the digital transformation process after that has really driven those business needs as it were. I think we're, we're more busy with, you know, looking at innovation around making sure we can keep in step with these particular needs. So for example, in, in technical real estate, again, it's just real estate, right, just like office, but obviously it's technical space data centers co location. And there's a massive drive across Europe to really look for these powered facilities. And at the same time, a massive drive to really get the hyperscales to come in as tenants. And so the big innovation now is if they come in at the last minute because they don't want to pay until they've got, you know, assigned contracts to come in. So how quickly can we deploy the various infrastructure, very physical infrastructure, which you obviously include is calling is the, the, the OPEC side of things. How can we use various free calling methodologies to keep that OPEC as low as possible. So that's where the innovation is, you know, the business process, the way that we actually deploy these units, not to say there isn't massive innovation when it comes to pulling technologies. I think that's still in step with new ways of looking at data center design, like OCP. And that step is slightly at a different pace to the massive business demands of the location. Okay, well it's interesting because we can then distinguish the speed of deployment that we need right now, and over the next half decade and then what's going to change in terms of technology and going to really reshape the inside of the data center or maybe the outside. Well, you know, just on that point, I think, not to say that in the near future, there won't be massive change. We know that obviously 5G, because of low latency, and, you know, decentralized computing will create a massive change just in itself. We're not quite there yet, but we know that the infrastructure is there to actually drive 5G. Also think HPC as well high performance computing which is now becoming a massive, you know, area only because there's more number crunching to do is more things that that AI drive to be able to get that information. And that would obviously create new technologies and new ideas. So it's there. I think the real focus now would be how do you need the current business need for these large physical infrastructure. Hmm. Okay. Well, I mean, and speaking, speaking how to provide for those needs that we have today. I mean, Airdale is one of the biggest players in this space in the data center world. What are the reasons? What's there like today? How have things changed or how has market demand changed over the last 12 months? I guess we'll kind of lined up with what you just said. And what's next? What are you guys planning on to launch to to unveil to to buy? What's what's next? Well, Airdale is an interesting company. Well, it started off as a relatively small player. 1974. That's when I was two. And it incidentally started off or interesting enough slide off in the IT space. Then it was data processing. So it's cracking with air conditioning. And then it got into chillers. The main state for Airdale up until probably about four years ago was commercial chillers, either in the commercial HVAC market, like, you know, schools and hospitals and commercial buildings just in normal chillers as we were. So within the, how do I put it, the enterprise data center space, where a company has it on data center relatively small. It's only in the past three years or so before years that it's got involved in the big oil location hyperscale. And I was brought on to accelerate that process. And that's probably enough. Airdale in 2005 was bought out by a company called Modi. And Modi in class themselves with the largest thermal management company, but mainly in vehicles. So, you know, you're calling with the contractors and vehicles and also cars will have you with companies clients like Ford. They realized only recently that electric cars is probably not the way to go when it comes to pulling their business. So they've sold off their vehicle their departments, our heavily looking at the building HVAC space, particular data center. So the position between molding saying, let's start investing our real might because they're $2 billion company. With one of the acquisitions, which have left alone until now with this massive growth in data center. So, I was on the road, massive change now molding have 42 factories around the world. And so, rather than having one huge facility leads, which is what we've done to export globally. Now we're trying to become a very different player utilizing a lot of these factories around the world, having a America and then obviously ultimately a pack region and being a true global player. Because the funny thing is, when you're dealing with publication, I just got a company, the dealing with global companies that want a global standard that don't necessarily look at the products as engineered solutions but look at them as, you know, products that need to be put in, in the right place at the right time so it becomes about logistics comes about service management. And therefore they need a player that can deal with them globally. And so we are turning into a, if a very good niche player, you can niche player into a global phenomenon. Interesting, very interesting. Just picking up what you said so of course you're becoming a niche player in that sense but because of the past with the automotive industry for example you do have expertise on how to deal with verticals. It is something that we're going to see the working more with so automotive companies we've seen Volvo for example announcing they're going to be a large data center. I believe in Sweden. I think it's within in the coming years. Range Rover did the same last year. Let's see you guys working more with automotive companies as well to build their own data center facilities and even other verticals so healthcare schools, government, etc. Yeah, of course, that's one of the things we're looking at. I mean, so it's interesting because you mentioned two verticals that are, you know, hand in hand so one hand, we're in a data center. We have the transfer transfer. So it will still provide commercial HVACs to various vegetables, but also you would have the data center. Data center solutions division, as it were, that will be provided into hyperscale and collocation. Now we will always have data center products, but therefore verticals can still sell our products within, you know, their particular vertical. So it's interesting because we've just gone through the transition where rather than look at our sales organization from a geographical perspective, we'll now turn it into verticals. So the case is how do you create strategies for these various verticals, because they're slightly different, like you can products require the slight different demands, and the biggest vertical at the moment of these will always your hyperscale and collocation. Yes, we will still be involved in the marketplace as a whole wherever there's a requirement for industrial based cooling and thermal management will be there. Okay, how would you describe Erdal's journey for the next 12 to 24 months in one word. AI. Okay, that's interesting. So, I say that because, you know, we will continue to build innovative products will continue to market will continue to be commercially astutes, because the market's changing and going through an explosion, and the various things that one has to do to be able to navigate these changes, and that's a given. So what we feel will differentiate us is we're seeing ourselves less of a product company to manufacture stuff less involving just thinking about how do you manufacture products and how do you get shipped and more of a solution provider a particular service. I think about it. If you're the service is cooling, right. And yet cooling is very interesting because you would think, well, let's just keep the cool in as low as possible. Let's keep the temperature as low as possible. You know, the temperature needs to be just right relative to astute figures because now you can call higher hotter. You've got more HPC environments coming in you've got mixed environments within a particular one space. How would you deal with these various cooling needs and also to do with maintenance, because you know that impacts the resilience of the city. And we find that AI is a solution. You know, whether it's the case of getting these cooling facilities to talk to each other to react to learn the pulse of that particular data. Every day so it's different. How do you learn using, you know, trend information and analyze that and train, you know, the cooling, you know, units to actually call in a more efficient way. But also, how do you create a scenario where you, you know, to maintain the unit before it actually needs to maintain predictive maintenance. One of the things that will make us unique in that scenario. The problems isn't about calling anymore. I mean, that's just mechanical. Yeah, you know, we just be another mechanical cooling manufacturer. And we'll always be, we'll always strive to be the best of course. But the issue is now if you've got a unit in there that will last for let's say 10 years, the life cycle of a data center is 20 30 years now. You know, how would that machine do what it's meant to do over that lifetime, because provocation hyper scale, the physical infrastructure is about is a cost base. So it becomes a financial analysis for the owners of this. And that's where we feel will be different. Okay, I mean there's very interesting because as you say that you took me back to 2015 when I went to, I mean, literally when I went to Stuttgart to a conference there. And this is what Bosch was saying that they're going to be doing around the end of the decade so around last year. They weren't really followed up to know if they did or not, but they were talking about all this as well so creating the digital twins creating this health healing infrastructure getting the AI enabled infrastructure that can run itself. Not just on a cooling and power perspective but with other things that come with a factory which are different to a data center. So I think that's that's very, very interesting. I'm sure there's a lot more that we can talk on that level because it seems like a big shift as well within Airdel as well. It is, it is a big shift when you're going global. Jonas, if people want to find more information about Airdel and what you're doing and then of course this AI future that's coming over the next year. Where can people go to find out more. So our website has always been there. So it will be www.airdel.com, very straightforward. That's the view of what we're doing certainly in Europe. To get a bigger view of, you know, how we are working with our parent company Moudine, then it will be www.moudine. I think those two websites will give you an overview of where we are. Okay, well that sounds good Jonas thank you so much for your time. It's been nice to catch up after three years. 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