At Connected Cloud & DC Edge, Dean Nelson, Founder and Chairman at Infrastructure Masons, discusses the unprecedented challenges and growth within the digital infrastructure industry, emphasising the rapid expansion driven by the global pandemic and the rise of generative AI.

Dean boasts 6000 global members and represents over $200 billion in digital infrastructure projects across 30 countries. The organisation unites the builders of the digital age, focusing on education, inclusion, innovation, and sustainability.  

He presents insights from iMasons 2024 State of the Industry Report, detailing issues such as power access, workforce shortages, public perception, and sustainability.

The industry faces significant power and people shortages, with a 300,000-person shortfall expected by 2025 and a pushback from communities against data centres. The rapid growth poses a challenge to achieving net-zero goals, and Dean stresses the need to rethink strategies to balance growth with sustainability. 

Collaboration is needed between major digital infrastructure companies, including AWS, Apple, Google, Meta, and others, to address the carbon debt associated with the rapid growth of digital infrastructure.

This initiative unites over 270 companies with a combined market cap of $8 trillion to focus on achieving net-zero carbon emissions.

They aim to decarbonise across three categories: building materials (embodied carbon), equipment, and energy sources.

The strategy includes aligning with the Open Compute Foundation for carbon accounting and promoting carbon labels on buildings and equipment.  

Additionally, they advocate for greener concrete and environmental product disclosures (EPDs) to inform purchasing decisions.

They propose creating clean energy zones, where data centres are located near renewable energy sources, to facilitate sustainable growth.

The effort also includes a “social accord” to sustainably integrate digital infrastructure into local communities.

The overarching goal is to balance economic, ecological, and social factors to ensure sustainable development and positive community integration. 

 

Key takeaways: 

  • Industry collaboration and decarbonisation: Collaboration among major digital infrastructure companies, including AWS, Apple, Google, and Meta, unites over 270 companies with a combined market cap of $8 trillion. This initiative focuses on achieving net-zero carbon emissions by decarbonising building materials, equipment, and energy sources, promoting carbon accounting and greener concrete. 
  • Sustainability and community integration: The strategy includes creating clean energy zones where data centres are located near renewable energy sources to facilitate sustainable growth. Additionally, a “social accord” aims to integrate digital infrastructure into local communities by balancing economic, ecological, and social factors to ensure sustainable development and positive community engagement. 
  • Industry challenges and workforce shortages: There are significant challenges faced by the digital infrastructure industry, such as power access issues, a 300,000-person workforce shortfall expected by 2025, and public pushback against data centres. There needs to be a rethink of strategies to balance rapid growth with sustainability goals amidst these unprecedented challenges.
Contributors
Dean Nelson Chairman & Founder of Infrastructure Masons
Dean Nelson is the Founder and Chairman of Infrastructure Masons, an independent industry group of executive and technology professionals entrusted with building... More

Dean Nelson is the Founder and Chairman of Infrastructure Masons, an independent industry group of executive and technology professionals entrusted with building and operating the physical and logical structures of the Digital Age.

Dean has led $10B in infrastructure projects in 9 countries. His extensive architecture, engineering and operations experience includes 29 years in Hardware, 22 years in Network, 17 years in Infrastructure Software and 17 years in Data Centers. He has produced numerous award winning innovations in mission critical facilities and compute environments. He also holds four US patents.

Until 2019, Dean was Head of Uber Compute, at Uber. His team is responsible for Metal as a Service (MaaS) technical infrastructure (data center, compute, storage, network and infrastructure software) and business functions serving Uber’s global leading ridesharing business, as well as UberEats, UberFreight, UberHealth, UberForBusiness, and Autonomous vehicle and UberAir development.

Prior to Uber, Dean worked at Ebay Inc for 6 ½ years as the Vice President of Global Foundation Services, which served over 300 million active users enabling over $250Bn of enabled commerce volume annually. At end of his tenure at ebay, his team successfully integrated, then split ebay and paypal infrastructures into two independent internet companies. Prior to ebay, Dean worked at Sun Microsystems for 17 years in various technical, management and executive leadership roles in Manufacturing, Engineering, IT and Real Estate. His final project was the consolidation of Sun’s multi-billion dollar global technical infrastructure portfolio of over 1,000 facilities.

Dean is creator of the Digital Service Efficiency methodology, the first miles per gallon measurement for technical infrastructure, used to measure ebay.com as a single system. He served as the Chair of the Technology Business Management Council High Tech Workgroup, and Chairman & Founder of Data Center Pulse in 2009 – an exclusive datacenter owner community with over 9,000 members in 100 countries. In 2016, Dean founded Infrastructure Masons, an industry association where infrastructure professionals connect, grow and give back. Dean was identified by SearchDatacenter.com as one of the top five people who changed the data center. Dean is also the recipient of Sun’s prestigious Innovation Award, Modular DC Deployment award and Best DC Design award from Uptime Institute as well as the Operational Excellence and Infrastructure Trailblazer awards from The TBM Council and Outstanding Contributions to the Data Center Industry award from Data Center Dynamics.

In his personal time he gives back by building schools and dorms providing access to education for impoverished children through his Mother and Son Just Let Me Learn Foundation. He also enjoys spending time with his wife and performing with his daughter.

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