2025 has brought a wave of significant investment across the data center ecosystem. As the industry increasingly embraces the convergence of power and compute – a trend Chris Butler, president of embedded and critical power at Flex, explores in conversation with DCD – the effects are becoming visible not only in the technologies deployed but also in the way data centers are built.

“It’s interesting because if you look at the way decisions were made even three to six months ago, you’d have separate meetings with somebody looking at power infrastructure and another person looking at the IT infrastructure, then maybe another meeting with somebody in charge of cooling,” says Butler, adding:

“When they started to do the math, they realized the plan they had for power wasn’t going to work. Everybody started connecting the dots. And so we're beginning to see this convergence – not only on the data center floor and in the way equipment is designed, but also in how companies organize.”

Long known for its heritage as a contract manufacturer, Flex has expanded deeper into product innovation to broaden the capabilities it delivers to customers. For Flex, Butler says, the exciting shift is finally reaching a point where cross-functional teams work together holistically. This change has enabled the company to deliver integrated solutions that help customers address the industry’s most pressing challenges: scale, power, and heat.

Scale, power, speed, heat

Each of these forces is putting unprecedented pressure on the data center industry. On the power side, securing enough from the grid in the first place is a struggle – and this doesn’t get any easier when it comes to powering up inside the facility. As the volume of deployed chips grows – and as per-server power density climbs – the demands placed on power systems increase exponentially. Butler explains:

“For example, if 20 percent of the chips in a data center switch from traditional CPUs to GPUs, you’re going to need three times the amount of power infrastructure in that data center. Flex addresses challenges like these by introducing a larger power-per-rack product, which now supports up to 1MW per rack, boosting the voltage.”

Heat presents another accelerating challenge. Direct-to-chip cooling is gaining traction as operators seek more efficient ways to remove heat right at the source. Flex has strengthened its capabilities in this arena through the strategic acquisition of JetCool and a partnership with LG, expanding its portfolio of advanced cooling solutions.

But, when it comes to scale, Flex is already operating from a position of strength, as Butler emphasizes:

“We doubled our manufacturing footprint last year in my business to be able to meet these challenges. That fast-moving side of Flex – the part that helps customers scale quickly – is really game-changing in this industry.”

Finally, the view that work is irrelevant unless it can be deployed at speed is becoming increasingly prevalent. ‘Speed to scale’ is overtaking ‘speed to market’ as the metric that matters most to customers, often eclipsing the technology itself. Butler emphasizes:

“It’s one of the reasons why we developed our new AI platforms – we’re trying to bring all these capabilities to customers as building blocks and help them scale quicker.”

Balancing performance and efficiency

As workloads become dramatically more energy-intensive, operators are under increasing pressure to balance performance with efficiency – especially when it comes to power delivery and cooling.

Beyond advances such as direct-to-chip cooling, even the fundamentals of how power is delivered to the chip are evolving. Butler explains that Flex provides power delivery from the utility all the way down to the silicon, a capability he describes as a major differentiator because it allows the company to manage the entire power chain within the data center.

Walking through the multi-stage process of stepping down power, Butler highlights that each stage requires a voltage transformation:

“Flex is involved in every one of these transitions. However, every time the voltage is transformed, some energy is lost as heat or inefficiency, which becomes a major issue when you’re trying to build highly efficient systems. That’s why Flex is working with customers to reduce these losses and improve the overall efficiency of delivering power to the chips,” he says.

As higher voltages become more common, he adds, the industry will be able to eliminate some of these transitions at the rack level, further reducing inefficiencies. Ultimately, true impact lies not only in technology but in the ability to simplify deployment and unlock rapid, scalable growth for customers.

Future-gazing

Looking ahead, Butler identifies two priorities that will shape the industry’s trajectory.

First, he argues that the data center sector must fully embrace standardization and modularization. Only by moving away from custom designs that can be difficult to manufacture can operators replicate and scale capacity at the speed today’s workloads demand.

Second, he points to the growing constraint in the shortage of technical professionals capable of deploying and maintaining increasingly advanced power and cooling systems. The technology can evolve rapidly, he notes, but without the workforce to support it, progress will stall.

So it seems sustained investment in workforce development, alongside continued innovation, will be essential to ensuring the industry can meet its future challenges – and seize opportunities for future growth.

Watch the full DCD>Talks episode here.