GISEC 2026: Anurag Gurtu, Co-Founder & CEO of Airrived
Expert Insight: Sid Bhatia, Area VP & General Manager for Middle East, Turkey & Africa, Dataiku
Expert Insight: Aaron Lewis, Chief Commercial Officer (CCO), Global Data Centre Solutions at Johnson Controls
Deep Dive: Brandon Smith, VP of Global Sales and Product at ZincFive
Spotlight Series: Faraz Arshad, CTO of STARZPLAY
Digital Forum: AI’s impact on the data centre sector
The second instalment of our Data Centre Exchange (DCE) series saw industry experts gather to discuss AI’s impact on the data centre sector. Our esteemed panelists were: Dr Angus Hay, Regional Executive South Africa, Africa Data Centres; Stephen Bowes-Phipps, VP, EMEA Data Centres, State Street Bank and Trust; and Simon Brady, Director Solutions Architecture, Accelsius.
The conversation centred around the following key talking points:
- Key architectural differences between traditional data centres and those optimised for AI workloads
- How the rise of AI workloads is reshaping infrastructure planning and investment priorities for data centres, particularly regarding power and sustainability
- The key considerations for designing AI-ready infrastructure to support high-density GPU clusters and their power and cooling demands
- How AI-driven management tools are transforming operational models for data centres and tangible benefits organisations are seeing in terms of efficiency, uptime and predictive maintenance
Our panelists shed light on their own experiences with AI and how it is taking shape across the industry, making for a truly enlightening conversation.
A special thanks to Africa Data Centres for supporting this initiative.
If you would like to be a part of the next conversation – taking place early next year – please don’t hesitate to reach out to [email protected]