Global Hyperscale Strategies Panel: Data Centre LIVE 2025
At Data Centre LIVE 2025, the Global Hyperscale Strategies panel gathered leading voices from the hyperscale ecosystem to delve into the trends shaping global data centre strategies.
The discussion brought together Yashnath Issur, CEO of Nxtra by Airtel Africa, Cara Mascini, Chief Sustainability Officer at Switch Datacenters and Richard Pimper, VP and CTO of Digital Power EMEA at Huawei.
What’s fuelling hyperscale data centre growth?
Opening the panel, the speakers identified AI and cloud expansion as the dominant factors accelerating hyperscale demand.
Yashnath pointed to a “20% to 30% growth globally on movement from in-house to cloud-based solutions,” and added that “the AI machine learning craze has taken over the world.”
Cara echoed these sentiments, emphasising the growing need for power to support AI technologies: “Where do you find the power? Where are those hotspots of take-off?”
She highlighted that regions offering cheap, renewable energy are becoming natural magnets for hyperscale growth.
Richard drew attention to geographical shifts within Europe, noting that growth is now spreading from established FLAP-D markets to Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities like those in the Nordics, Spain and Portugal.
He explained, “I’m curious to see how AI grows. We see DeepSeek, OpenAI and GPT and all the other guys are coming to the table.”
Tackling sustainability and power constraints
As the conversation moved to sustainability, the panel acknowledged the increasing tension between capacity expansion and environmental responsibility.
Cara described how integration with local infrastructure and innovation in energy recovery are becoming vital: “what we're doing is looking where it makes sense to set up a data centre and where we can integrate with a great company to solve some of their issues.”
Richard highlighted that his organisation reinvests 23% turnover into R&D: “We are number six at the moment worldwide in digital power with data centre facility and mission critical environment.”
He underscored the importance of not only creating sustainable facilities, but educating the public about their role in communities.
Yashnath offered a broader view of the challenge, distinguishing between short-term and long-term solutions: “The short term is just finding a way to generate that amount of power. We were thinking of how long term you’re going to be more sustainable as you get that power to those data centres.”
Managing pace, planning and future outlooks
Beyond sustainability, the panelists tackled the logistical and strategic hurdles faced by hyperscalers today. Richard flagged “time to market” as the number one concern, advocating for early collaboration between stakeholders and wider adoption of modular builds: “Everybody has to understand what the others can bring to the table.”
Site selection was another key theme, with Yasnath noting that “thinking about growing in London versus… Kenya or India is very different.” He urged a shift from a purely data centre-centric view to one that factors in latency, sovereignty and workload placement: “Separate the high latency to low latency workloads and then you plan accordingly.”
Cara identified flexibility across financing, infrastructure and operations as critical to future success. “We need to be much more flexible in the way we design our infrastructure… flexible financing, flexible organisation, flexible integration.”
The panel also addressed whether the industry is pacing builds to avoid overcapacity.
Cara suggested natural constraints would enforce a degree of pacing.
Yashnath, however, stressed it is a “region-to-region conversation,” with some areas like Europe showing no signs of slowing down due to “a lack of capacity for growth.”
Looking ahead: technology, density and localisation
In a forward-looking close, the panel discussed the technologies and trends that will define the next five to ten years.
Yashnath predicted rising compute density would reshape build strategies, with cooling emerging as a major challenge.
Cara added that integration with local communities and financing innovation will be necessary.
Richard expanded on this with a call for a holistic approach. “Next five years, maybe 100 megawatt per rack will be a normal thing,” he said, adding that AI-driven data centres could soon become the norm.
He stressed the importance of embedding data centres into community ecosystems to truly unlock long-term resilience.
Closing the session, the panel reflected on how fast the sector is changing.
With megawatt-scale deployments now routine and expectations for sustainability, speed and local engagement rising, it’s clear that hyperscale strategies are entering a transformative era – one that will require constant reinvention.
Essential diary dates for 2025
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- Tech & AI LIVE London + Cyber LIVE London | 14-15 May
- The Global Tech & AI Awards | 14 May
- Tech & AI LIVE Dubai | 4 June
- Tech & AI LIVE Singapore | 4 November
- Tech & AI LIVE New York | 18 November
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