Sanjay Kumar Sainani
Global CTO and SVP of Business Development for Data Centers at Huawei Digital Power
Sanjay Kumar Sainani, Global CTO and SVP of Business Development for Data Centers at Huawei Digital Power, has witnessed the evolution of critical infrastructure first-hand over his 35-year career. From oil rigs to semiconductor fabs, and now to AI-powered data centres, Sanjay’s journey mirrors the technological shifts that have reshaped industries.
“I've been involved in designing and delivering power and cooling infrastructure for computer rooms and control rooms in various industries including oil and gas and semiconductors in the earlier days,” he reflects. This diverse background has given him a unique perspective on the challenges facing today's data centre industry.
Sanjay’s global experience, spanning the US, Asia Pacific and EMEA markets, has exposed him to a wide range of technological and regulatory environments. This international perspective is particularly valuable as today’s data centre operators grapple with varying energy policies and sustainability requirements across different regions.
At Huawei Digital Power, Sanjay is applying this wealth of experience to tackle the unprecedented challenges facing the data centre industry. The rapid growth of cloud computing and AI is driving demand for data centre capacity at a pace never seen before.
“The cloud services business is growing at year-over-year rates of 23% and is expected to touch US$700bn,” Sanjay notes.
“The AI market, which was about $40 billion in 2022, is expected to grow to $1.3 trillion in a 10-year period.”
This growth is not just about scale, but also about fundamental changes in the nature of data centre operations. The power density requirements of AI workloads, in particular, are pushing the boundaries of traditional data centre design.
“AI/LLM training DCs using parallel processing compute start from 40KW and expectations are of 100-200KW per cabinet in the near future,” Sanjay explains. This represents a quantum leap from the 8-10KW per cabinet typical of current cloud infrastructure.
Sanjay’s experience in mission-critical environments has instilled in him a deep appreciation for the importance of reliability and efficiency. These principles are now being applied to Huawei’s data centre solutions, such as the Power-POD, a modular system that integrates the complete electrical power infrastructure.
“This allows our customers, which include hyperscalers and colocation players, to rapidly deploy at scale MW of data centre facilities,” he says.
Sustainability is another key focus for Sanjay, drawing on his experience across various industries. Huawei Digital Power’s approach includes not only improving energy efficiency within the data centre, but also integrating renewable energy sources and exploring innovative heat reuse strategies.
“Huawei, with its ecosystem partners, is currently engaged in projects collaborating with local governments and utilities to integrate data centre heat into municipal heating systems,” Sanjay reveals. This kind of systemic thinking, considering data centres as part of a broader energy ecosystem, is central to Huawei’s approach.
Looking to the future, Sanjay anticipates continued rapid evolution in the data centre industry. “We expect to see new and more holistic architectures from chip to cabinet to building to campus to handle scale and flexibility of these ultra-dense data centres,” he predicts
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