As we see it, the global data center industry is at the cusp of a technological revolution. Several conducted research studies predict that the modular data center market will drastically grow from 13.07 billion dollars in 2017 to a whopping 46.50 billion dollars by the year 2022, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate of 28.90 percent. This sector is emerging rapidly at the forefront of technological innovation due to the increasing number of users selecting high-performance and energy-efficient data centers. The notable growth in the modular data center market is driven by the increased adoption of green data center technologies across a broad range of organizations, the need for reduced Operational Expenditure (OPEX), optimized data center flexibility and scalability, and the escalating demand for portable data centers. Clients are creating multiple data centers across different geographies as it proffers unequalled flexibility and boasts of mobility that permits the use of it in any remote location or a temporary makeshift location. Multiple modular data centers can be combined to form one single system as well. One has the ability to transport the data center in any location in need for addition, integration, or modification into the company’s already existent data center footprint. Despite the gradual projectile growth rate observed, such technological advancements are full of complexities and demand for a skilled team of professionals to deploy the solution and achieve its full potential.
At the helm of the modular data center market, Texas headquartered TAS Energy with its technically adept team facilitates clients with its modular engineered products for data centers and other industries. The team partners with other organizations’ in-house teams to better understand their goals and begin with the product and technology development. With proven processes in place, the TAS team brings a lifecycle modular mindset from design through manufacturing, site logistics, installation, start-up and maintenance. The team constitutes a full disciplined engineering staff with integrated procurement, modular manufacturing, service support and disciplined project management. “At TAS, we have a continuous dialogue with customers, suppliers and with our staff on trends and technologies and invest in first of kind systems that we can prove and manufacture at scale for our customers,” states JT Grumski, President and CEO of TAS.
Portfolio of Feature-rich Products
With a strong commanding presence for the past 19 years in this domain, the company’s comprehensive suite of data center products encompasses complete data hall infrastructure up to the IT cabinets, modular UPS and electrical switchgear systems, and mechanical systems for support infrastructure and cooling infrastructure.The modular data hall product ceaselessly works towards significantly reducing staffing levels required at data center sites, enabling rapid and cost efficient increments of data center capacity to be executed. TAS has delivered over 1,400 data hall modules at several data center locations and is currently projecting to substantially increase that number over the next several years.
An innovator with a strong command over the domain, TAS extends its services in manufacturing modular cooling units for data centers. After conducting extensive market research and taking into account its years of expertise dealing with a broad spectrum of customers across multiple industry verticals, the modular cooling units have been designed to assist data center owners to achieve highly efficient PUE’s while reducing over footprint and enabling ease of maintenance.
Customising Solutions to the Unique Needs of the Customer
Delving deeper into the company’s offerings, TAS possesses a deep expertise in thermodynamics, power delivery, power augmentation and cooling that enables it to create complete tailor-made products specifically designed for the climate and location that are in tandem with the customer’s efficiency goals. Every product of the company impeccably delivers the most effective and efficient cooling solution. Continually maintaining its leadership position in this sector, TAS is now fielding highly efficient modular cooling units, first-of-a-kind immersion-cooled, stand-alone modules to support high-density computing as well as products with very high-efficiency air cooling. These advanced solutions of TAS greatly minimize the overall energy use and significantly reduce the physical footprints devoted to these data applications.
The Inception of TAS Energy
Nearly two decades ago, TAS began its eventful journey. The company was formerly established as a modular offsite manufacturer of turbine inlet chilling systems to augment gas turbine power plants output by cooling the incoming air. Over the years, TAS has successfully attained the complete know-how of the thermal systems segment and applied its modular packaging concepts to a gamut of high-tech industries including data centers. “TAS has always been an innovative company, but in the initial years the company took on a number of first-of-a-kind product development efforts around the world including modular geothermal power plants, chilling modules for liquid natural gas facilities, as well as several custom modular systems for industrial applications,” informs JT, a veteran in delivering technologically advanced solutions across a broad range of IT, energy and government customers.
Having devoted themselves to multiple, simultaneous product development efforts as well as geographical diversification, the company’s resources started thinning out and the team’s ability to focus became strained. With the data center realm showing promising opportunities, the company reined in its offerings whilst still executing turbine inlet chilling projects at a high level; most of its product development focus and capital investments are related to modular data center products. TAS has moved a long way from where it started and continually endeavours to deliver exceptional services monitored by a highly skilled team of professionals.
Enabling Better Communication that Propels Better Project Results
Every project undertaken by the company is treated as a personal project where each member strives to learn from it. Taking it as a notch up, each project member conducts meetings where they collectively have discussions of the things learned that could better their performance in every project review. One of the truest lessons that the company has stitched into the very fabric of its organizations is that one must have effective communications and collaboration throughout the entire project lifecycle in order to ensure the success of the project. In a bid to cultivate a better environment in line with communication that drives productivity, TAS implemented a “TAS Forward” training program for the entire staff within six months of JT’s arrival at TAS. This was deployed with the objective of improving the understanding of staff as to what needs to occur to ensure success across the entire project life-cycle. Having adopted the strategy to partner with fewer customers and develop deeper relationships resulted in some very notable positive experiences and long-lasting, successful relationships.
Staying Ahead of the Game
Riding the wave and staying abreast of the technologies that evolve with time, TAS is continuously evaluating key trends in the markets and pushing the envelope on technology integration. Advocating for high levels of environmental standards,TAS is headquartered at a LEED designated facility that includes the full spectrum of environmental and safety standards that one would expect from a industry leading technology company, including hybrid / electric car charging, solar power generation panels, industrial and paper recycling, and water conservation measures. It is more than 600,000 square feet of offsite manufacturing space in three Houston facilities with access to a well qualified labour pool thereby enabling the company to meet and exceed even the largest modular build demands.
In addition, to test solutions at an early stage, TAS invested in a modular solutions lab. Essentially, the lab was originally built as a modular data center nine years ago. To optimize the utilization a few years later, the lab was converted into a 100KW data center tied to a solar array that is used to operate for a customer as well as a lab where the team integrates and tests new technologies. The company is testing and working to optimize a wide range of cooling technologies from high density air to two-phase immersion cooling. The recent work done in this field has focused extensively on two phased immersion cooling. TAS has submitted four patent applications to date that cover enhanced vapour circulation, variable temperature & pressure control, electrical power distribution, and wire harness matrix distribution. The high density, two-phase immersion data center modules offer over 30 percent more processing capability while using 90 percent less cooling energy than a comparable air-cooled solution.
Making a Difference
With a huge customer base built over the years, the company has worked in over 280 projects across 32 countries and three continents and is currently shipping up to 2,000 modules annually. The company has perfectly poised themselves to overcome any hurdles that are encountered by the client or in the market itself. A decade ago, a renowned data center customer approached TAS for its services. The relationship commenced when the client’s research and development team wanted to develop modular cooling unit prototypes. Helping the client to accomplish its business goal, the prototypes proved to be successful in facilitating a faster incremental build and help drive increased energy efficiency. This partnership was forged almost a decade ago and is still going strong today with the content client working with TAS on diversified modular products.“Over the last [9]years, TAS has developed and built more than 70 modular cooling units encompassing numerous different configurations for multiple sites in the U.S. and internationally for this customer,” adds JT. Another remarkable client success story is how TAS was given the challenge to ‘modularize’ a key process in a high tech manufacturing facility. The company developed an innovative modular design concept that was implemented by the customer post their approval. “We believe TAS’s design will accelerate construction and reduce cost. TAS is known for taking new ideas and technology and innovating fast,” firmly says JT.
Recognised for its contributions made in this sector, TAS was selected as one of the Top 20 Most Promising Energy Technology Solution Provider in two consecutive years 2016 & 2017 by CIO Review Magazine, was awarded the title on one of the 10 Most Innovative Energy Tech Solution Providers 2018 by Insights Success and was named by The Silicon Review that featured the company in the 50 Most Admired Companies of the Year 2018 list.
Future Roadmap of the Company
Forging the path ahead, the team at TAS has geared themselves to continue to innovate and be the frontrunner in developing high performance and efficient data center infrastructure. In stride with several novel technologies, the solutions will facilitate tremendous value propositions to be unlocked in the future associated with edge computing, blockchain applications, machine learning, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, autonomous driving and the likes. Steadily climbing up the ladder of recognition, the company aims to bag the title of a leading provider of innovative modular solutions across the data center spectrum from hyperscale / cloud to the edge. Signing off on a positive note, JT reveals, “In conjunction with this, we will continue to serve our high technology customers while continuing as the industry leader in gas turbine inlet chilling and thermal energy storage systems. TAS will most certainly grow with our focus, but we will strive to never lose sight of our core values and continuously adapting our business to ensure we are developing and delivering innovative modular solutions to our customers.”
