Revolutionizing Data Centers with AI and Digital Twins

The explosive growth of Generative AI and ever-increasing digitalization has created a monumental demand for computing power and storage. This presents data centers with significant market challenges: securing land and power, optimizing energy consumption, and achieving critical decarbonization targets. 

At GlobalLogic, a Hitachi Group company, we are experts in converging the physical (OT) and digital (IT) worlds. We are applying this expertise to transform data centers into truly intelligent enterprises. Collaborating with other Hitachi group companies under a joint vision called “Think beyond data center”, we leverage AI, and the convergence of OT and IT, to help data center customers enhance scalability, reduce operational complexity, improve compliance, and unlock new efficiencies. Our efforts also improve sustainability and enable innovations, allowing data centers to meet unprecedented demand despite resource limitations.

Beyond Traditional DCIM: Building a Digital Twin

Unlike conventional Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) systems that reactively adjust to workload spikes, GlobalLogic and Hitachi adopt a holistic approach to proactively manage the entire  infrastructure of data-centers. Traditional DCIM systems, which typically only connect  IT infrastructure and facility management, are no longer sufficient to meet these complex demands in facility bandwidth. 

GlobalLogic connects all critical components of the data center ecosystem, including:

• Energy supply
• Battery storage
• Cooling systems
• Facility management
• IT and Security infrastructure. 

By aggregating metadata from every subsystem, an AI-powered digital twin model is trained. Our comprehensive software suite effectively augments traditional DCIM with a digital twin powered by AI, digitalizing and enhancing operations, as shown below:

Building Intelligence Using AI

This intelligent integration unlocks a multitude of capabilities for proactive and optimized data center management:

• Predictive Workload Management: Smart data centers can predict increases in workload  and prepare for peak times. This allows for proactive adjustments to energy supply or drawing additional power from battery storage and initiating intensive cooling in advance, preventing wasted kilowatt-hours and extending the lifespan of IT assets.
• Real-Time, Data-Driven Decisions: AI excels at pattern recognition, enabling data centers to pivot faster, plan better, and reduce costly errors. Predictive analytics can optimize assortment planning based on seasonality and supply constraints, while AI combined with IoT can proactively manage inventory. 
• Predictive & Prescriptive Maintenance: Smart data centers move beyond reactive responses to issues; they anticipate them. AI-driven predictive and prescriptive maintenance algorithms extend hardware lifespan, enhance budget forecasting (reducing maintenance costs by up to 10% and planning time by 20-50%), and increase equipment uptime by 20%. This ensures that equipment is replaced before failure happens, preventing downtime and maintaining critical KPIs. GlobalLogic has successfully implemented such solutions, helping a global leader in power technologies identify failure modes and calculate asset health indices for predictive and prescriptive maintenance.

Enabling Scalability and Resilience through Simulation

The digital twin technology is a game-changer for data center scalability and resilience, allowing for modeling and simulation of these future scenarios:

• Optimizing data center operations.
• Planning future growth based on real-world usage patterns.
• Preventing bottlenecks by anticipating future computational needs.
• Constructing disaster scenarios to understand if their data center is adequately protected and prepared for critical situations.

A Commitment to Sustainability

Sustainability is at the core of the future data center, with a critical focus on achieving zero-carbon targets. As a Hitachi Group company, GlobalLogic supports Hitachi’s commitment to a carbon-neutral society, leveraging superior green technologies.

By connecting all parts of the data center ecosystem, it becomes possible to understand, track, and significantly reduce the carbon footprint across every operation. Sustainability use cases include: carbon footprint tracking to meet ambitious goals, cooling Efficiency Ratio monitoring to optimize energy use, and total heat load management to minimize energy waste. 

GlobalLogic’s efforts in this area are exemplified by accelerating the development of a facility control platform that enables retailers to optimize HVAC units, refrigeration, and lighting systems, enhancing both operational efficiency and sustainability.

Shaping the Data Centers of Tomorrow, Together

The future of data centers is smart, sustainable, and scalable. By bridging OT and IT, connecting every subsystem, and harnessing the power of AI and digital twins, GlobalLogic, as part of the Hitachi Group, is unlocking massive operational efficiencies, improving sustainability, reducing heat waste, and increasing data center uptime. This comprehensive offering optimizes overall data center efficiency, reduces costs and downtime, optimizes resource usage, and ultimately increases the net business value of data centers.

We are committed to helping our clients not just meet the demands of tomorrow, but to thrive in a world that requires data centers to be more intelligent, more efficient, and more sustainable than ever before.

Let’s engineer impact together. Contact us to get started today.