How to gain an unfair advantage over your peers

Was at a private gathering of just over 100 data centre professionals in Bangkok today, where I did the opening keynote. Here's what I shared.

I taught them how to gain an unfair advantage

Gain an unfair advantage

I wrecked my brains for this. In the end, I opted not to do a rambling discourse of data centre trends that will get outdated in two weeks flat anyway.

Instead, I shared some tips on how busy professionals in the data centre ecosystem can look beyond the hype to better predict future trends.

And hence gain an advantage over their peers who only read headlines and can't see what's coming.

Separating fact from fiction

Using recent data centre developments. I explained how they could separate fact from fiction.

Here are the tips I shared:

a) Not all reports carry the same weight
b) The details do matter
c) Know the agenda of all involved
d) Ask: Has anything changed?
e) Discount the rhetoric
f) Look at the facts

Draw your own conclusions

Using the above strategy, it's hence possible to gain a deeper appreciation of recent developments than what you read in news reports.

Specifically:

• Lessons from last year's data centre fire in S'pore.
• What will DC-CFA2 look like?
• Will DeepSeek really slow down AI?

We need more manpower

As with every conference or data centre gathering that I attend, I easily gained more than I shared.

For instance, Dean Hickman-Smith shared how the data centre industry is facing a massive skills shortage.

• It's hard to hire and retain for operational teams.
• Remote work didn't make things easier.
• IT know-how don't translate to critical infra.

And you know what, a large portion of data centre downtime is caused by human error - but you probably already knew that.

What you might not know is how the overwhelming majority of human error-related outages involved ignored or inadequate procedures.

Ouch.

And the double-whammy? So many data centres are coming online, it's going to be a massive industry-wide problem.