Melbourne Convention 2025: Enterprise Demand & Digital Infrastructure in Transition

The environmental, social and governance responsibilities which form the basis of ‘sustainability’ are continually evolving in terms of their measurement, management and delivery  What are the key learnings from the industry’s history of sustainability so far – what are the successes and achievements, and the areas where improvement may be required?  How can sustainability targets be reached across hybrid infrastructure configurations?

Data centres are considered significant consumers of power across the world. This, together with the costs of power and the need to conserve one of the industry’s most critical resources, means  that data centres of all types need to manage their energy demands effectively and, increasingly, move away from the traditional consumption of power from a central grid. Where and how can data centres look to reduce waste as power travels from generation to the point of consumption? How effective are the means and metrics for evaluating the efficiency of the whole process?   Where is innovation still most needed?

Cloud computing is considered to offer users agility, flexibility and efficiency in the digital economy and this looks set to continue – according to Grand View Research, the worldwide public cloud services market is forecast to grow 14.1% p.a. from 2023 to 2030. Yet cloud is not static; how will the growing deployment of AI and digital technologies be managed in terms of their strong reliance on considerable volumes of data?   What role will cloud computing play in this, and how will the forms in which cloud is made available and specific services develop?

How will the deployment of digital technologies within data centres stave off the continuing evolution of cyber-crime and the increasing threat it may represent to datacenter and cloud services?  What are the key technologies and processes required to deliver better cyber protection technologies? What will be the role of people, skills development, management systems, and digital strategies in fighting the ever-present threat? 

In what ways are the requirements for data centre design, build and operation likely to change over the coming few years?  Which requirements will grow stronger and which, if any, will reduce? What will be the impact of the growing demand from AI learning and delivery?  And from the increasing role of AI as an operational and planning tool? How will the planning and design process factor in these changes (even those which may be less certain to happen)? How might the Victorian data centre of 2034 and the skills required to work in it be different to today?

The speed at which digital services are evolving and increasing their reach represents a challenge for legislators. Governments will tend to be slower in their response to issues requiring their consideration and potentially the need for legislation. There are many areas that legislation can and has touched in terms of data centres – location and build, resource consumption, HR practices, data sovereignty, security of data among others. Where will the legislative focus lie moving forward? What pieces of recent and upcoming legislation does the industry needs to be aware of?

How far do enterprise data centres follow the policies and guidelines of the companies which own them or are data centres left to pursue their own paths towards sustainability? Do service data centres and cloud providers follow relevant corporate policies or are targets based on the profile of individual facilities and their clients? What role do different sets of national legislation play?

Is the community view of data centres still largely ‘unformed’? What evidence do we have for what the wider public outside the data centre and associated industries think? How does the opinion and information provided by media outlets outside the industry shape the view of the industry among different groups? Does this matter – if so, why? If not, why not – should it?

Cooling can be viewed as one of the most intractable challenges in the data centre universe. Accelerating demand and rising densities are adding impetus to the criticality of cooling and heat removal. What does the future for data centre cooling look like in terms of requirements, technological development and deployment practices?

Connectivity is one of the key requirements for colocation and cloud as they act as key enablers of the digital age and the technologies that drive it. Data and services are transmitted to and from (other) data centers, to intermediaries and end-consumers across the world and, in some cases, beyond it.  The expectation is of lower latency, greater reliability and higher speed. As cloud, colocation and hybrid infrastructure continue to diversify services and increase their share of digital infrastructure across Australia, how well are each of these prepared for the demands of an era based increasingly on connectivity?