Sydney Cloud & Datacenter Convention 2025: Cloud & Datacenter in Transition

Hall Chaired By:

The term “AI Factory” has been growing in prominence over the past 12 months. Join Mark Roberts and Bass Salah as they share the expected growth of these facilities, impact on the physical infrastructure design and the journey to the launch of the first Sovereign AI Factory in Australia.

Off-grid Conditioned Power up to 500MW

Burgeoning power demand requires innovative solutions when the grid can’t cope. This British engineering group brings together three highly regarded leaders in their field to offer an independent power solution to data centers.

Bergen Engines, (formerly Rolls-Royce Bergen Engines) of Norway, Italian generator manufacturer Marelli Motori and the German Gold Standard UPS producer, Piller Power Systems, comprise the Power Solutions Division of Langley Holdings plc.

As Australia’s data center landscape rapidly evolves, organizations are faced with the strategic decision between colocation and self-build facilities. What is the current state of colocation vs self build in the Australian market? What are some strategic considerations that companies need to look into when choosing colocation over self-build and vice versa? What’s the future outlook for colocation growth vs self-build over the next 3-5 years? This interesting panel discussion will explore all these and much more.

Deploying connectivity infrastructure in AI clusters—whether compact AI clusters or massive AI Factories—presents unique challenges. These include shortened project timelines, significantly higher optical fibre counts, limited pathway availability, and the added complexities of power, cooling, and migration planning. In this session, Matias Peluffo will share insights and lessons learned from real-world deployments, offering practical approaches for designing and deploying the connectivity infrastructure needed to support the Generative AI networks of today and tomorrow.

As environmental sustainability rises to the forefront of data center operations, stakeholders—from regulators to investors—are demanding more than PUE metrics, Energy Attribute Certificates, or long-term net-zero pledges set decades into the future. They expect measurable action, transparency, and demonstrable progress in reducing environmental impact. With governments worldwide leading the charge on climate action, the industry must accelerate its efforts and deliver meaningful contributions. This keynote will explore the increasing scrutiny on digital infrastructure’s environmental performance and highlight the essential role of cross-functional collaboration in driving sustainable change without compromising reliability. Attendees will gain practical insights and holistic strategies to achieve tangible, lasting environmental impact within their organizations.

Best practice datacentre management is required to deal with the growing demands on data centres in the context of requirements for continuous availability and cost (and carbon) efficiency. This presentation will describe the process of achieving an overview across the entire data centre and a view of where risks to operations are highest. The keynote will also take the data centre forward in time as AI and other demand sources ratchet up the pressures on data centre operation and management.

What, broadly, are the processes that different vendors of data centre solutions and equipment go through from coming up with the initial ideas behind a solution to bringing it to market? What are the key decisions made at critical points in this process? How are key trends and changing market needs factored into the design, manufacture and ‘go to market’ process? How will these processes evolve moving forward into the future?

A technical presentation focusing on the impact of AI on power quality for your data centres and possibilities to manage the negative impacts in order to maximise uptime.

As the demands of AI and ML push infrastructure to new limits, AWS Colocation Engineering is evolving to deliver scalable, resilient capacity with the same transparency and performance expectations as AWS-designed facilities.
This presentation explores AWS’s global infrastructure strategy, from its distinctive regional design to its power architecture, emphasising decentralised UPS systems, in-rack battery backups, and engineering practices aimed at reducing failure blast radius. It also highlights how AWS designs for high availability and rapid replication across Availability Zones while optimising for AI and ML workloads. With a focus on execution, scope, and talent development, this session offers insights into how AWS continues to innovate, streamline delivery, and build long-term infrastructure partnerships.

Security products, systems and services tackle the evolving needs of some of the world’s most complex organizations. Your security backbone with deployment with options incorporating multiple technologies including mobile, cloud, artificial intelligence and cybersecurity. The open architecture solution supports multiples of third-party system interfaces that extend the capabilities of your security management system.

While the principles of sustainability have become more widely adopted in corporate culture, it has taken longer for their practices to be viewed not merely as costs, but as strategic investments. Going green today means more than environmental responsibility—it also means adopting smarter, more resilient business practices that maximize every dollar spent, reduce organizational inefficiencies, and transform burdensome costs into value-generating opportunities. How are these trends playing out in the data centre sector? What role can leadership, technology, best practices, and corporate values play in driving both sustainable and economically sound progress across the industry? 

Australia’s data centre market has experienced unprecedented growth for an established economy, with CBRE’s 2024 report estimating its investable universe at $23 billion, projected to reach $40 billion by 2028. What’s fuelling this momentum—and what risks or disruptions could slow it down? As demand continues, how are data centres being viewed from a real estate perspective? How do they compare to other asset and infrastructure classes, and what impact does this lens have on investment appetite, valuation, and operational strategy?

As awareness grows of the importance of data centres in enabling today’s digital world so the challenges faced by the industry are more widely observed. The next few years will further increase the focus on digital infrastructure from business, from Government and from the wider community. As requirements for operational performance, sustainability and return on investment ramp up, how will data centre leaders deliver now and into the future on these objectives?