High-Performance Computer Brings Billion Dollar Returns

© Matthew McFarland | Gensler

We all can imagine how many people have bought a high-performance sports car – in some cases shelling out hundreds of thousands of dollars into an investment that is fast and sexy – thinking of the potential excitement and thrill of driving it. In the back of their mind (maybe), they are thinking its value might possibly increase as a collector’s item; and, maybe, just maybe, they will make some money out of the deal (less the thousands of dollars they spend every year on maintenance).

The question being: can high performance translate into high returns?

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Where Data Centers Meet Design

Image © Gensler

“How do you get excited about designing a space that’s for machines and not for people?”

I’ll never forget being asked that question years ago at the end of a presentation about a data center project. It’s a valid question about what it means to be an architect for data centers – buildings that are typically considered more engineering-focused than design-focused.

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Your Secret Weapon in 2016: The Design of your Data Center

Confidential Software Client, Hillsboro, Ore. Image by Ryan Cook

The data center isn’t back of house business anymore. Long gone are the days when company data centers were out of sight and out of the public consciousness, managed by the proverbial wizards behind the curtain. In the tech-fueled economy, data centers not only ensure the delivery of critical service, they make headlines. There’s Facebook’s wind powered data center in Fortune and Intel’s CTO in The Wall Street Journal standing next to the data center that could rival Google and Facebook. The data center has taken its rightful place as a competitive advantage for the company that does it right.

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Fully Charged: Examining the Pros and Cons of Using Fuel Cell Systems in Large-Scale Applications

Image © Vincenzo Centinaro

The United States is one of the world’s largest and fastest growing markets for fuel cell technology. In 2012, nearly 80 percent of total investment in the global fuel cell industry was made in U.S. companies.

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4 Trends Shaping the Future of Data Centers

Image © Gensler

As iPhone 6 mania continues to sweep around the globe this week, and people are newly focused on how mobile technology will transform their lives, I’m thinking about the data centers that underpin our computing systems. When our use of technology grows and changes, the infrastructure that supports it changes, too. As a designer of mission critical facilities, I’ve learned that it’s really difficult to build data centers to keep pace with technology, yet that’s a reality we face along with our clients. At Gensler, our Mission Critical practice watches changes carefully. Here are the four trends we see impacting data centers most today.

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