Artificial intelligence is no longer an experimental technology confined to labs; it is rapidly becoming the backbone of business innovation, powering everything from autonomous vehicles to advanced drug discovery. Behind the breakthroughs lies an invisible but critical enabler—the data center.
Once built to handle steady-state enterprise applications, today’s facilities must evolve into AI-ready ecosystems, capable of sustaining GPU-heavy workloads, massive datasets, and unpredictable power demands. The transformation is underway, and industry leaders are rethinking every layer of infrastructure to prepare for this new era.
Walid Issa, Senior Manager, Solutions Engineering – Middle East & Africa at NetApp
For Walid Issa, Senior Manager, Solutions Engineering – Middle East & Africa at NetApp, the shift starts with performance and efficiency at the storage layer. “NetApp supports AI workloads by offering high-density, energy-efficient All Flash Storage systems that reduce power and cooling demands,” he explains. By combining ONTAP AI with Nvidia GPUs and hybrid cloud capabilities, NetApp ensures that GPU utilisation is optimised without overwhelming data center resources. It’s a delicate balance: maximising compute performance while keeping energy consumption under control.
But storage alone is not enough. AI places extraordinary pressure on the data highways that connect systems together, and here the network becomes the unsung hero. “Our Propel fiber platform supports advanced optics, enhancing energy efficiency and scalability to meet the growing demands of AI data centers,” says Hans-Jürgen Niethammer, Data Center Market Development at CommScope.
He points to innovations like co-packaged optics in network switches, which cut down on power-hungry digital signal processors. “Using passive MPO fibre connectors instead of transceivers can deliver major cumulative savings across large-scale AI environments,” he adds, showing how networking can play a decisive role in meeting both performance and sustainability targets.
That sustainability question extends well beyond the network. As AI models grow larger, so does their appetite for data storage. Owais Mohammed, Sales Director for Middle East, Africa, Turkey & Indian Subcontinent at Western Digital, highlights that the very fuel of AI is unstructured data. “Scaling from 26TB to 32TB drives for 1 Exabyte can lead to 18.7% fewer racks, 18.8% fewer drives, and 18.8% lower total power consumption,” he notes.
Owais Mohammed, Sales Director for Middle East, Africa, Turkey & Indian Subcontinent at Western Digital
For organisations chasing efficiency, the math is compelling. Western Digital’s approach blends high-capacity HDDs for cost-effective bulk storage with flash and NVMe-oF for low-latency workloads. “Flexible architectures offer far greater value than one-size-fits-all solutions,” Owais stresses, underscoring the importance of agility as AI infrastructure continues to evolve.
If compute, storage, and networking are the muscles of the AI-ready data center, power and cooling are its lifeblood. AI workloads don’t just consume energy; they spike unpredictably, creating new stress points. “Our power infrastructure provides reliable, resilient delivery through integrated systems that minimize deployment time and maximize efficiency,” explains Tassos Peppas, Regional Director for MEETCA at Vertiv.
The company’s Trinergy UPS is engineered to absorb these bursts, while its liquid cooling solutions, such as the CoolChip CDU portfolio, address the heat generated by GPU-intensive environments. “We’re working closely with chipmakers like NVIDIA to ensure our systems keep pace with next-generation density,” Peppas adds.
Integration is where the story truly comes together. Each layer of AI-ready infrastructure must align to ensure smooth data flows and efficient operations. Issa emphasises that NetApp’s ONTAP AI and BlueXP platforms provide seamless orchestration across hybrid environments, creating a unified data management engine that supports Kubernetes, vector databases, and MLOps tools. This not only accelerates insights but also eliminates the silos that can slow down AI projects.
Hans-Jürgen Niethammer, Data Center Market Development at CommScope
Niethammer at CommScope points to the importance of design discipline in this process. New infrastructure guides map cabling solutions, plot transceiver locations, and recommend integration options, helping operators ensure every connection is optimised for AI performance. “It’s about assured connectivity efficiency,” he explains, noting that a structured approach prevents bottlenecks in fast-growing AI environments.
Western Digital, meanwhile, leans on decades of expertise to guide customers through integration at the storage level. Owais notes that the company works closely with partners to ensure its drives and platforms slot seamlessly into existing environments. “Our architectural expertise helps organisations deploy the right storage for their workloads and environments,” he says, stressing that AI demands bespoke solutions rather than cookie-cutter models.
Tassos Peppas, Regional Director for MEETCA at Vertiv
Vertiv takes the system-level view, tying together compute, storage, and networking with prefabricated, modular infrastructure. Its Vertiv 360AI platform embodies this philosophy, combining advanced power and cooling with integrated monitoring. “We take a holistic approach, helping data centers run AI applications reliably and scale confidently,” Peppas explains. By offering pre-engineered solutions, Vertiv enables operators to accelerate deployment timelines by as much as 50 per cent—a crucial advantage as AI adoption races ahead.
The journey to AI-ready data centers is not just a matter of adding more racks, drives, or GPUs. It is about orchestrating a delicate ecosystem where every watt, every cable, and every terabyte counts. From NetApp’s intelligent tiering and seamless pipelines, to CommScope’s fibre innovations, Western Digital’s high-capacity storage, and Vertiv’s modular power and cooling systems, the pieces of the puzzle are coming together.
As AI continues to expand its influence, the data center stands as the foundation of progress. Organisations that invest now in integrated, efficient, and scalable infrastructure will not only keep pace with the demands of today’s models but also be ready for the next wave of innovation. In this new era, AI-ready data centers are more than facilities—they are the engines of the digital future.
