Market Overview

The data center liquid cooling market is expected to register a CAGR of over 25.2% during the forecast period 2019-2024. Rising investments in high-density technology, high-performance computing, and power smart city initiatives are making state and local players engage in developing the most reliable and efficient methods to cool their data centers.

Increasing volumes of data generated are creating the demand for data centers, and these centers consume a considerable amount of energy. In 2016, data centers consumed 416.2 terawatt hours of energy, accounting for 3% of global energy consumption, and nearly 40% more than the entire United Kingdom. This consumption is expected to double every four years.

It is estimated that the Chinese data centers consume around 1.5% of China’s energy, and the data centers in the United States consume almost 2% of total energy in the United States. The number of data centers is expected to grow further in the coming years.

Moreover, traditional data centers are highly inefficient, with their cooling systems consuming around 39% of the total power, as most of the data centers around the world are still relying on traditional cooling solutions.

The energy consumption in data centers has been increasing with the growth in cloud computing technology. Thus, there has been a rising interest in the environmental performance of data centers. Hence, companies have started managing this concern on their premises.

With increasing technological advancements, the focus of companies is now shifting toward reducing power consumption to improve efficiency and reduce costs. Therefore, the demand for efficient facility systems is growing. Regulatory compliances remain one of the major challenges for data center vendors. For instance, the European Union has been proactively attempting to cut down on emissions and power consumption in data centers.

Moreover, the Netherlands government has issued strict guidelines based on PUE metric to regulate DC power consumption in data centers. While these measures are needed to ensure environmental sustainability, in the short term they are de-stabilizing the data center vendor market.

Naturally, the cooling systems in the data centers are also being checked for efficiency. Data centers are complex and carry the uncertainty of quantity, timing, and location metrics. The cooling systems need to engage in high-density zones, and it can be an onerous task for traditional cooling mechanisms. A typical data center cooling system must be pre-engineered, standardized, and modular. They are required to be scalable and flexible to meet the data center needs. This is difficult in today’s world with companies looking to cut down costs and being unwilling to spend much on the high-end customized cooling systems.

Companies are also unsure of whether their cooling systems, which are currently in use, can sustain the future server load or not. This makes infrastructural changes frequent and the companies unwilling to invest much in newer cooling systems.

The current market is highly price-sensitive and low on differentiation. Data center operators are also wary of potential downtime losses while shifting to new cooling systems. Hence, they are willing to overlook operational expenditure and continue to use outdated cooling systems. This trend slows the adoption of new technologies that are perceived to be untested.

Scope of the Report

Data center cooling solutions are used for the maintenance of optimal operating condition required for the smooth operation of data centers. The data centers process a massive amount of data within a short interval of time, which produces a lot of heat and might damage the equipment. Cooling is necessary for optimum operation of data centers, and hence consumes the majority of power.

Key Market Trends

Banking/Financial Services Segment expected to register a Significant Growth

Banks are increasingly adopting public cloud services, as they provide flexibility and agility, resulting in a decrease in the number of data centers that are present and redundant without much use, thus augmenting the demand for the data center liquid cooling market.

According to a survey by Intel Security, the number of companies adopting hybrid cloud services alone has risen by three times the previous size. Cloud providers have been increasing security and providing better and robust systems, which can be highly beneficial for companies. Banks have been adopting the use of biometric authentication tools, to combat identity theft and fraud. Increased digitization and connectivity have paved the way for many entry points in the system, which have been creating more amount of data, driving the need for data centers.

The use of data centers in the domain has slowed down, owing to the advent of new trends, such as software-defined data centers, which migrated the storage to a more distributed framework, unlike the typically used data centers. The Bank of America has shut down three data centers as they have been migrating to similar architecture. This has saved the cost of maintaining these data centers for the company. Through the existence of such trends, banks have been unveiling new data centers to support their operations and activities. The Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation has opened a new data center with an outlay of USD 182.5 million. This data center is expected to support the regional business requirements of 18 countries.

North America Anticipated to Hold a Dominant Share

In the United States, the demand and rate of adoption for cloud-based computing are rapidly increasing, owing to which, data centers are ascending in the country, thereby, propelling the utilization of data center liquid cooling.

Liquid cooling is now highly preferred over conventional air cooling, due to its greater efficiency and higher economic violability. The United States is home to many tech giants, such as Facebook and Apple, wherein, the volume of Big Data is tremendously increasing; moreover, companies are laying new strategies to ascend a number of data centers.

In June 2017, Facebook announced to lay a 200-mile cable to the new data centers in Mexico, which are likely to boost the market growth over the forecast period. Additionally, a few states of the United States are offering tax incentives, specifically to data centers. For instance, Florida approved use and sales tax exemption for every new data center built in the state, which is expected to present a positive impact on the US market growth.

Companies are rigorously investing in data centers to meet the growing demand from respective operations. For instance, the rising demand for cognitive capabilities in the United States has led IBM Corporation to build four new cloud data centers in the country. This is likely to encourage the utilization of liquid cooling technology in these data centers, thereby propelling the market growth over the forecast period.

Competitive Landscape

The data center liquid cooling market is highly competitive and consists of several major players. In terms of market share, few of the major players currently dominate the market. These major players with prominent shares in the market are focusing on expanding their customer base across foreign countries. These companies are leveraging on strategic collaborative initiatives to increase their market shares and profitability. The companies operating in the market are also acquiring start-ups working on enterprise network equipment technologies to strengthen their product capabilities. In November 2017, Asetek served its existing OEM partner Fujitsu for the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST). The order for Asetek RackCDU D2Câ„¢ (Direct-to-Chip) liquid cooling is expected to be used at the AI Bridging Cloud Infrastructure (ABCI) cluster, which is poised to become the fastest supercomputer system in Japan.

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