Jon Abbott, Vertiv's sales director for strategic telecom clients in EMEA.

Vertiv, a global provider of essential digital infrastructure and continuity solutions, says it is prepared to collaborate with Kenyan telcos and data centre providers to address Artificial Intelligence (AI) challenges.

According to Jon Abbott, Vertiv's sales director for strategic telecom clients in EMEA, telecommunications and data centre operators worldwide, particularly in Africa, are facing increased hurdles in satisfying AI-driven expectations.

On Monday, Abbott addressed Kenyan executives from the telecom, tower, and colocation sectors at an event in Nairobi.

He provided insights into the operational and technological shifts that would redefine the whole communications network ecosystem by 2030.

“The challenge for Kenya is that AI adoption is already transforming the IT stack and IT infrastructures. This means that accelerated architectures are needed to meet the requirements of AI workloads,” Abbott said.

He pointed out that the tangible network upgrades necessary will involve operational changes that consumers will not see.

This is anticipated to include changes in network ownership and increased service charges, driven mostly by rising energy consumption demands as intelligent connectivity increases, according to Abbott.

“This will place a greater emphasis on efficiency, while more attention will also have to be paid to sustainability and emission reduction,” Abbott explained.

According to Abbott, data centres as we know them now will not disappear.

Rather, they will continue to expand, while more and smaller edge data centers will populate the landscape, each with the same fundamental physical requirements as their larger counterparts: always on, never getting too hot, which puts cooling systems under strain, and operating as efficiently and securely as possible.

“The challenges all this poses in terms of energy provision, particularly in the face of energy transition and sustainability requirements to meet the 2030 global emissions reduction goals, will be considerable,” he said.

Abbott said other challenges include meeting the expected exponential growth in rack density and skill availability constraints, as well as trade-offs between new builds and retrofits, power grid constraints, and an increasing demand for short turn-around times and repeatable, quick-to-deploy designs.

“The bottom line is that AI will be a major challenge for network providers with data consumption and creation accelerating across all sectors, and data processing saturating the facility landscape. While this could be daunting for providers, having the right partner at your side – one that can assist with power and thermal management, and integrated rack solutions - every step of the way will help to smooth your deployment journey,” Abbott said.