Your CTO Might Be Cool… but Your Data Center Needs to Be Cooler

Let’s be real for a second: your CTO is probably brilliant, strategic, and maybe even a little fun in meetings. But when it comes to staying cool? That’s where the data center needs to step up. Because as AI workloads explode, heat is becoming the silent enemy of performance, efficiency, and growth.

I’ve seen this firsthand in conversations with customers… AI projects that sound great on paper hit a wall when the infrastructure can’t keep up. It’s not the algorithms that fail, it’s the environment they run in. And while your office thermostat might keep the people comfortable, those racks packed with GPUs need a whole new level of chill.

Why Cooling Is More Than Comfort

AI isn’t like your traditional workloads. The days of gently humming servers with a few VMs sprinkled in are long gone. Today’s AI servers push out heat at levels that make traditional air cooling look like someone blowing on a hot cup of coffee. When rack density climbs past 20kW or more, heat becomes a serious barrier… not just to performance, but to reliability.

And here’s the kicker: if you don’t address cooling strategically, you’re not just running hot you’re burning money. Cooling can easily account for up to half of your data center’s energy costs. That means every degree of efficiency you gain isn’t just saving your hardware… it’s saving your bottom line.

Dell’s Approach to Staying Cool

This is where Dell is leading the way, and why I’m excited every time I get to talk about it. As one of Dell’s top partners, Arctiq and I’ve had a front row seat to how they’ve been rethinking cooling from the ground up.

• Direct Liquid Cooling (DLC): Instead of relying on traditional airflow, DLC pulls heat right from the source—those high-powered CPUs and GPUs—keeping performance steady and costs under control. It’s a core part of Dell’s approach with Dell PowerEdge servers.
  
  

• Rear Door Heat Exchangers (eRDHx): Think of this as a smart escape hatch for heat. Mounted directly to the rack, it removes heat before it ever has the chance to spread into your data hall.
  
  

• Hybrid Options: The reality is that not every workload—or every business—needs the same approach. Dell makes it easy to mix air and liquid cooling strategies so you can scale at your own pace.
  
  

What I like most is that Dell doesn’t treat cooling as an afterthought. It’s baked into their entire AI infrastructure strategy, from the servers themselves to the services that support them. That’s the kind of holistic design that gives IT leaders real confidence when they’re making big AI bets.

Cooling = Performance + Sustainability

It’s tempting to think of cooling as a technical detail, but the truth is it sits right at the intersection of performance and sustainability.

• Performance: Your GPUs can’t deliver on their promise if they’re throttling back to avoid overheating. Proper cooling means you’re getting the full ROI on your AI investments.
  
  

• Sustainability: Data centers are under the microscope for energy use, and rightly so. Smarter cooling strategies slash wasted power, reduce carbon footprint, and align with corporate sustainability goals.
  
  

• Cost Control: Energy bills aren’t getting any smaller. Efficient cooling directly translates into real, measurable savings and is a key factor in improving your Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE).
  
  

The Bottom Line

Your CTO is cool, no doubt. But if your data center isn’t cooler, you’re going to hit limits faster than you think. Cooling isn’t just a facilities issue anymore… it’s a boardroom topic. It impacts budgets, sustainability targets, and the very ability to innovate at scale with AI.

That’s why I’m proud we partner so closely with Dell. Their decades of innovation in cooling and their willingness to rethink it for the AI era, make them the clear choice for organizations that want to push boundaries without burning out their infrastructure.

If you’re looking at how to scale AI in your business, don’t overlook this piece of the puzzle. Performance, sustainability, and cost savings all start with one thing: keeping it cool ;)

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