In The Arena by TechArena - Fostering the Cutting Edge of Data Center Innovation with OCP's Lesya Dymyd

Episode Date: April 29, 2024

TechArena host Allyson Klein chat’s with OCP’s Lesya Dymyd about her work steering the organization’s future technologies symposium as well as her deep collaboration with European technology providers and operators delivering to the region’s unique market requirements.

Welcome to the Tech Arena, featuring authentic discussions between tech's leading innovators and our host, Allison Klein. Now, let's step into the arena. Welcome to the Tech Arena. My name is Alison Klein, and I'm recording from OCP Lisbon this week. Today, I'm excited to be joined by Lesya Demid, chair of OCP's Future Technologies Symposium. It's a very busy week for you, Lesley. Thank you for making time for us. Why don't we go ahead and just have an introduction of your role at OCP?

Yeah. I'm Fernanda Caramo. I'm an STL and OCP foundation, and I'm in charge of Future Good Not His Self, and I'm also helping with the OCP startups and the OCP EMEA coverage. Everywhere at OCP Lisbon, I was looking at the agenda and you're just all over it. You're the chair of the Future Technology Symposium. What are the key topics this week in Lisbon and how do they relate to the challenge the industry is facing in meeting the AI era computing demands. Yeah, this is a very exciting time for us, for the LTV Foundation.

We have a lot of projects. And then also, as you mentioned, covering a lot of exciting projects and programs within the LTV community. So first, let me explain what is important as well. So, listen, please, we need our five-annual event that spotlights future organizing technologies in the IT ecosystem. So our mission is to identify future technologies, to identify those innovations,

and then also focus on the technologies that could be deployed in our ecosystem and also on the people because we want to work with the audience that comes from the academic research institutions, industry, startups and also venture communities. We partner with different groups under the OCP and specifically with the RTI, which is Future Technologies Initiative. Future Technologies Initiative keeps their longer projects. These are our efforts to bring future technologies through commercialization and partnerships. So for this regional symposium in this one, we were focusing on the AI HPC and also on the data sustainability solutions. So our goal was to understand what are some of the key challenges

in our industry in terms of the AI and HPC and what can our community do to solve those questions. We also focused on the data center sustainability because as you know, the industry demands

and user demands with the AI world is growing. So we need to have systems that support this law. It's also that we need to have data centers, infrastructure that is capable to pull the systems and also to support the relevant demands. So by and large, this is what we're trying to achieve with our FTS community.

First, identify the trends and challenges. Second, propose some solutions for them. And third, to bring them to do more. That's an incredible charter. Now, AI has represented a catalyst on steroids for driving requirements for computer innovation. Where do you see the industry focusing its attention today? And how does this relate to how OCP fits into this broader venue?

As the industry and the end user express their growing demand and growing interest regarding the AI solution. So it also means that data centers should be ready, right? Speaking of future technologies, we need to focus on evolution of AI and large language knowledge, and also on the insect fracture. They can figure out these things. And these also include the memory. What is

memory? The cooling challenge we need to solve. The optics, the networking, storage, and power. And also, how can we make it a more sustainable way that can last and be effective in the long term? And this also

includes the customization and heat reuse opportunities, which specifically are highly interested in the European organization that we can see in the OCP. Then, when it comes to the OCP and St. Elodion, we play a very important role, I believe, for our OCP persistence because first we want to identify the emerging opportunities and

strengths. Next, we want to create the platform for these collaborations to happen between multiple organizations. It starts with search organizations, academic organizations, and also venture communities. And finally, we want to help commercialize these new technologies through partnerships and deployments of those technologies at scale in our data centers across the globe. If we look at the foundational platform innovations that are covered in this week's sessions, what do you see as the major focus points for innovation in 2024?

And are we at pace with market demand for new platform capabilities? We can clearly observe that the AI is changing the market's landscape and we have so many different presentations around AI and infrastructure. the AI is changing the market's landscape and we had so many different presentations around AI and infrastructure. So at this

symposium, our focus point would be around this system that can support these goals. What got us very interested in the future technology symposium, we had a very good interest from the audience around the cooling.

What are the cooling capacities to cool and support the loads? So again, the same key challenges that we observed are cooling, power capacities, and do we have enough power to cool the system to support the increase in demands? And how can we make it in what is the even way? Now, you mentioned startups earlier. You were also on a panel earlier this week talking about startups and DC funding. OCK has purview to help deliver this vibrant market

and has incredible programs to help startups. How has that evolved in 2024? And where are you seeing these startups entering the market? Yeah, Alice, and as I mentioned, part of my role is to lead the OMSCP startup membership and program within the OMSCP community. It's a relatively new program. We launched it a year ago,

and we have been observing a great demand and interest from our emerging startups in the community. So right now we have more than 30 startup members and we continue to grow. So those are really great indicators for us. One of the reasons why we're doing this, we want to identify technological trends and opportunities early in their process. And we believe that the startups have a higher agility and flexibility in terms of bringing these technologies and innovations to the OCP community. And that's why we decided to put an extra aperture on these. And also our intention is to promote our outreach to investors and funding communities.

So in terms of technologies, of course, Xero starts through focusing on technologies that are relevant to the OCP ecosystem, and those include AI, millions of memories, natural objects, and of course, data centers, and including six of them. In terms of the demographics, we can see those startups are coming from the North America, from the ENA region, and also the AIDES. So we are happy to cover the global outreach and have this startup that's representing different regions and bring them to the OECD. You're also a leader in SEP's European activities. You're based in France. What is this effort working on,

and what is unique about European innovation right now? Yeah, very good question. So as we have heard from the keynote at the OCP regional summit from Lisbon, the global outreach of the OCP deployment and impact is counted at 34 billion US dollars. We understand that part of this is also on the

European market. We have 22% of members in our community. We also understand that we have grown in some time around 22 to more than 260 European solution providers, which are currently in our marketplace.

So there are good indicators showing that we need additional efforts. I'm sorry, we are in the present. There is a demand there, there is a market there. Anyway. So what is unique about our program there is that the market is different, the demands are different as well, and we need to approach it differently. I can give you some examples, Codon partner with the research institute, for example, to identify innovations and to work on innovative technologies. One of the examples is the OpenEU2C project in Spice.

So, why did the Institute lead this project? This is the European Commission Horizon Project and the OCP Foundation is an advisory organization for this project. And the goal of this project is to work on partnership around the open edge of cloud and building European digital sovereignty. So as you see, we are bringing the partners and we are also contributing to these types of efforts on the European market. Another specific example is that the OCP Foundation,

we work with our European community project lead that help us to bring awareness, help us to bring knowledge to the local organizations in Europe. And also explain what are the benefits of the OCP solutions, what are the benefits of being a member of the OCP community.

And also we try to meet with end users, enterprises, with vendors, trying to understand one of the key challenges and how can we help solve them. Again, our efforts are mainly around bringing the education, bringing the awareness, and also creating the platform

for collaborations. And also our ultimate goal is to increase adoption of the OCP equipment, OCP solutions in the European region. Fantastic. I know that, Clifford, through the conversation, we've piqued our listeners' interest about OCP.

What you're delivering in OCP, they're going to want to reach out. So how can folks find more information about the organization, get involved in the organization, get involved in the organization and connect with you? Yeah, the best way to reach out would be to visit our website. We have a dedicated website for the OCP Future Technology Symposium. So those who would like to learn more about that, get engaged, please visit our website. We also have the newsletter where people can sign up and get the recent news and reminders about the deadlines. We have an upcoming 40 papers and participation for technology demonstration.

And we are planning for the OCT Kim Cha Technology Symposium at the Global Assembly. So our symposium will be held on October 16 in San Jose, California. So I would like to help from participants to apply for the paper or apply for the technology demonstration and join us at the symposium in San Jose. And lastly,

we also have the LinkedIn group, which is under the FTI. So search for UCB Future Technology Initiative. We also furnish the information about the symposium on this channel. So we'll be really happy to connect and get new participants to engage with that and help us bring the

future technologists to the mark. It was a pleasure talking to you today. Thank you so much for taking the time out subscribe and engage at our website thetecharena.net all content is copyright by the tech arena