Thanks for tuning in to Let's Get Digital.
I'm Carrie Charles, your host, and happy to have you here with me today.
We've got another great episode for you.
I have with me Ron Mann.
He is the Vice President of Compute Dynamics Modular.
Great to see you, Ron, again.
What, I saw you at Data Cloud a few weeks ago?
Good to see you too, Gary.
Thank you for the opportunity here.
Yes, absolutely.
We sat on a panel together and I was just so impressed.
thought not only did you do a great job, but you just had so much information.
I learned a lot from you and I thought let's do this on the podcast.
But first, I want to know a little bit about you.
How did you get to where you are?
Tell me about your path to success, if you will.
Well, it was a long, arduous journey, uh but it was been a lot of fun.
So yeah, so I kind of started out in IT space at actually Compaq Computers.
uh Actually, before that even, was doing some, I was at a subcontractor in all places, Huntsville, Alabama, that was building computer circuit boards for Compaq.
And that's how I got the role at Compaq back in the, let's just say early 90s.
And uh back then when I hired on, I hired on is what they called a new
uh products manufacturing engineer.
So my job was to take the designs from product development and make sure they could be manufactured in a way.
And back then was PCAs, circuit assemblies, things like that.
And back then we started out with what's called the system pro.
So that was kind of the first server that was introduced and it actually derivative of the desktop.
So I was there when this whole server thing started, right?
And Compaq wanted to kind of get into a new business and put a higher end.
kind of desktop out there.
So I came up with these servers and then that led to an infrastructure, what we call the data center infrastructure group.
Because back then we were selling a lot of these things.
These are all towers back then.
They weren't rack mount servers as you see them today.
But we had a company that we were dealing with, a little small company at the time called Microsoft.
And they said, hey, we're using these servers, but you know, they're kind of bulky to put them in bread racks and
these tower things, could you like turn it on its side, maybe put it in some kind of a rack thing that we could just do a little bit more consolidation.
And so that's how the rack business got started.
We actually looked at the Grainger catalog, found a company that could do racking uh and there was an industrial rack.
It really wasn't an IT rack at the time.
And we made a bezel that was horizontal in that same server chassis.
We started doing that and that became the rack business.
And then that led to, what about backup?
What about UPSs?
What about oh power distribution, PDUs?
Those didn't exist.
No, those didn't exist back then.
was all plug strips and whatever you think of, right?
And so it kind of evolved into an entire uh kind of ecosystem of stuff that we were supporting.
And so it just wasn't out there.
So we got into the rack business, got into the UPS business, the PDU business, just all sorts of stuff.
And that led finally into, which we'll talk about in length here, the modular business.
And so it is kind of a step function, right?
And it was a pretty successful business for Compaq at the time and eventually HP, but it really all started because we were trying to support selling servers.
What's the most economical way to sell a server?
And that's how it kind of all started.
So tell me about CDM and now that's the, how we refer to the company, right?
Compute Dynamics Modular.
copy dynamics is basically a group that or a company that we started to basically focus on IT modularization.
So there's a lot of people in the data center space that are talking about, you know, how to do power modules, cooling modules, that type of stuff that all support a traditional
stick built data center.
But what we want to do here is support the actual IT elements.
So we want to put IT in modules.
and ship them as configured systems that you can basically put anywhere, especially for the edge, as you hear a lot about things like that.
And that actually started back in the compact days and HP days, so we were starting to do that.
But it's kind of evolved now to become more of a thing.
so, yeah, we'll do a power module and things like that to support the IT modules, but we're really here to support IT modularization, both lower, mid-tier power ranges, all the
way up to AI.
Okay, then so tell me a little bit more about like who you serve and just get into the company a little bit deeper.
So we have a lot of interesting uh customers.
uh We deal a lot with the, what I call the IT, uh original equipment manufacturers, OEMs.
They're interested in selling their IT and they want to be able to put what I call the wrapper around that.
And modularization is a good way of doing that.
And they don't want to focus on the modules because they want to focus on the storage and the servers and the AI and all that.
So looking for trusted partners to help put together that final solution who do it for a living, right?
And that's interesting because when I was doing this at Compaq, that's the way I did the business.
We didn't want to develop UPSs and create a whole team to do UPSs.
We would go hire a company that was expert in that.
We'd say, here's our spec or here's our requirements.
Can you build to this type of thing?
And it was a great partnership because you think about it, know, at the time, HPE Compaq had a huge channel, but they needed certain support elements that just weren't out there
yet, you know, because we were developing servers that were...
six, nine, 18 months out.
We knew what the requirements were going to be and there wasn't the right support structure.
So I take that same philosophy now and say, okay, Mr.
ITOEM, what are you coming up with?
What are you doing?
And how can we make sure that our infrastructure supports that when it
So when you say modular, what exactly do you mean?
In my terms, modular is basically anything that's done in a factory that can be shipped to the site and commissioned or installed at the site.
So you'd want to do as much as you can in the factory environment versus the field because it saves you time and money.
On average, uh you can save anywhere from 30 to 50 % doing modular in both time and cost if you plan it correctly.
Right.
And so, and so think about the advantages of manufacturing.
You have standard processes, standard quality controls.
There's a lot of standardization you can put into these systems and solutions that when they get to the site, then you're just hooking it up.
Think about how much time you spend.
I'll give an example.
Let's say you're doing something simple like a pump skid.
All right.
Say there's five pumps on this pump skid.
Traditionally, you'd have those pumps delivered to the site.
You'd have a electrician and a plumber come out and they'd hook up each individual one.
If I can put five of those on a skid.
and it's all hooked up and plumbed up and ready to go, then all I'm doing is connecting that skid when it gets to the site, all five pumps, well then I've saved all sorts of time
and effort for everybody.
And that's really the essence of what modular is, is how to make it more cost effective for both the field installation and what you can do in the factory.
So what would you say that really changed the game in Modular?
Oh, AI, no doubt about it.
One of the things, and I've been doing modules a long time, and when we were first doing this back in the day, and the reason why we started doing it is it was kind of an
evolution.
Because you think about it, when you first started doing racks, what would happen?
You'd go to the data center site, the rack would be delivered empty, all these server boxes would come, and storage boxes and whatever else, and you'd integrate all that on
site, right?
So we got the interesting idea at Compact, say, okay, what if we integrate that in the rack and shipped it all integrated and fully connected?
Now you have a rack full of stuff all ready to go.
And so we made that a business.
We called it Compact Factory Express and it was very successful.
We had developed a rack that you can move around, you know, like on small little wheels.
And there was a lot of design and development going into that.
And then we got into, well, gee whiz, we can do it for a rack.
What about a row of them?
That's where the modularization came in.
We put them in an IT module, right?
And it was a fairly successful.
sold a lot of that stuff to a lot of the big hyperscale guys at the time who were really expanding quickly and they needed a quick way to get to market.
But what uh made it interesting for us is the fact that we could do all that again in a factory environment and get it out the door that way.
So that kind of led to what we're doing now and why we like to integrate this stuff kind of uh in that format.
But that kind of started the whole thing with uh
of how far you can take it.
Now, what happened on the power side was that what we realized was when you start most data centers today, I'm sorry, let me go back.
Most data centers say three or four or five years ago before AI, pre-AI, where typically a rack of IT was 10 kilowatts, I like to talk about kilowatts or watts per rack.
So most data center racks are 10 kilowatts per or lower per rack, right, on average, which meant
that all data centers for the last 30 years were designed to handle that kind of a load.
And so really the IT was taken out of the equation, right?
So all data centers could handle that kind of load.
And oh, if you did have a 20 kilowatt rack or you had some application that required that, well, in-row cooling came in, rear door heat exchangers came in.
There are ways to do what they call spot level cooling to bring that load from 20 or 30 kilowatts back down to 10 so the data center could take the rest of the heat.
And it worked great for years.
And I remember having these discussions.
at different forums probably 10 years ago about how, you know, it's going to get up to 20 and 30 and 40 kilowatts a rack.
It's going to change the game.
And it never did as fast as I thought.
And the reason why was because the IT guys kept getting very innovative.
They kept finding better ways to cool stuff with fans and heat sinks and better utilization of power efficiency and things like that.
So basically it kind of took the data center having to change out of the equation, right?
And what we found when we were doing this back in the day is that
To make modular cost effective, you typically had to be above 22 kilowatts a rack.
And that made it more cost effective to be in a module than it did in a data center.
I could go either way if it was below that, right?
But, okay, fine.
And so things were starting creeping up.
All of a sudden here comes AI.
135, 125 kilowatts a rack going up higher, right?
Totally changed the game.
There is not a traditional data center on the planet that could support that kind of heat load, right?
And so that...
made a lot of sense for modules.
Because you think about what you're doing in a data center environment.
uh If you and I are in a conference room, and say it's built for say 20 people, just me and you there, the AC could go out and we may not know it for an hour or two because it's
over provisioned, right?
There's more cooling capacity in that room than us.
Consider us being IT relics.
If you and I are in a car and we're driving in the Houston heat, the AC goes out of the car, we're going to know it very quickly because the air is cooling us.
It's not cooling anything else.
And that's really the concept of a module.
It's cooling exactly what it needs to cool, which is the IT, so it's more efficient.
You're not cooling a lot of extra space, and that's what makes it efficient.
uh
So how does uh CDM do modular differently or different from others?
Good question.
uh The way I kind of look at it is uh not to begrudge anybody out there, what I see at least today, what most modular providers do is they take, OK, I build these type of
infrastructure solutions for data centers.
How can I put them in a box and use it in a modular format, right?
My in-row cooling, whatever I'm doing.
And I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that, but it's basically taking a known application or a known
technique and you're just basically putting it in a different type of uh a box or a different type of form factor.
I have never looked at it that way.
Well, how we look at it at CDM is because of our IT background, we look at it from an application perspective.
No one's in the data center business just because people want to sell hardware.
Someone's trying to run an application.
An application requires IT hardware, which requires the infrastructure around it to support it.
And so we always look at it from that perspective.
So what we want to do in our applications is to be as efficient as we can with cooling and power, no over or under provisioning so that you don't, so you can match it up.
As an example, a lot of times you'll get to some of these module guys and they'll say, okay, here's my solution is 500 kilowatts as an example.
Well, I don't need that.
I need 300.
Sorry, this is what we got.
I can match the cooling and power to your 300 and you're not going to be over or under provisioned because of how we do our design work.
And you got to keep in mind, we've been doing this for a long time, probably longer than most people have done it.
So we know what works and what doesn't.
So we're not using the customer as the guinea pig.
know, hey, we just got in the modular space last year.
You you're our second or third customer.
We're still learning.
You you don't get that from us because we know what works and what doesn't.
What we're focusing on is the performance of the architecture to support what your application is.
Got it, got it.
So where are you seeing the hottest demand and maybe give us a couple of use cases where the edge makes the most sense.
You know, it's interesting.
uh You hear a lot about learning and AI learning, right?
All the big guys are doing it.
These big bloated data centers.
You look at the Nvidia, like NBL72 platform, and they put a lot of information out there on how that's supported and what's the best way to support it, because it's so dense.
And so that's a big one.
uh What we try to do in our space, uh
from this perspective is we try to look at it a little bit differently is again, it gets back to the application and what we're trying to support, but it's really about the
application and what's the best way to support the end to end.
So I don't know if that answered the question thoroughly or not, but that's kind how I look at it.
Yeah, no, that makes sense.
How do you see modular data centers enabling inference workloads at the edge?
Okay, so the inference side's interesting.
yeah, to answer that question a little bit better.
eh What we try to do is, when we first looked at this, we looked at learning what was going on.
We said, okay, there's a lot of people doing that.
We've got a module that support that.
We call it our learning module.
You can do anywhere from 1.5 to three megawatts.
And then we started looking at, okay, well, where's inference going?
What's inference mean?
And inference is interesting to me because if you go back a few years and people talk about the cloud.
And everybody asks, what is the cloud?
And you'd hear four different answers from four different people, what the cloud meant, right?
And in first, I kind of put in that bucket.
the reason why I do is just because it's unknown.
I wouldn't call it the wild, wild west, but there's a lot of, it's a new market.
It's emerging market, right?
And I think inference has a lot of interesting applications.
So that's where we're seeing a lot of the growth is in inference.
And what I mean by that is it's not, it's AI, but it's not.
Say for example, if you look at the NVIDIA's NVL72 platform, I think it's eight AI racks and eight network racks, right?
It makes up that solution for learning.
What we're finding in Ference is people need one AI rack or two AI racks and a couple of network racks.
So it's still high density per rack, 130 plus, but it's not a lot of them, right?
And they want to put them in different locations.
uh Edge is all about, people ask what a hedge is all the time.
And it really depends again who you talk to.
If I talk to a large,
hyperscale guy, he might say, well, my edge data center is 50 megawatts, right?
If you talk to a guy who's trying to do, I don't know, automated driving, it might be half a megawatt, 300 kilowatts, right, an edge.
But really what it's all about is edge is all about removing latency, getting the source as close as you can to the customer so you don't have any latency, right?
An example I like to use is if you're using one of the maps,
Google Maps, whatever you use, Microsoft Maps, you don't want to find out free access to go, you should exit it because your data was late getting there, right?
So that's really what it's all about.
And so people are finding exactly right.
And so that's what you're trying to, you're trying to really get that stuff set up in a way that makes sense.
And so that's where we see a lot of uses.
And the other thing that's coming up is people are trying to find and utilize stranded power, right?
which is another big thing on AI data center.
think about that.
If you've got a stranded power of two or three megawatts here or there, put a little AI module there, right?
And use that power.
I've got some customers who are talking to us about, hey, I've got my data center, it's full, I can't put any more IT in it without building more on it, but I've got five
megawatts of stranded power I can't use.
Perfect for a module.
And we can put them anywhere.
We can put them on roofs, we can put them on parking lots.
put them just you know name it we put them there so.
So talent is a big, really hot topic in our industry right now.
And the talent gaps, we just don't have enough people.
What are you feeling with CDM when it comes to being able to get the people that you need?
It's getting tougher.
I won't deny it.
uh We've kind of got a little bit of a two-edged sword in the modular space.
First off, there's not a lot of people who understand modular.
It's still fairly new, right?
And uh especially IT modularization, right?
It's one thing if you're doing an electrical skid, okay, now I'm taking these components.
Instead of putting them individually in the data server, I'm going put them on a skid and ship them out.
It's the same basic stuff.
In the IT modularization, there's a little bit more uh skill sets and differentiation to it.
how you do the cooling, how you stand that way, how you handle backup, how you handle redundancy, all this stuff uh in a very small form factor, right?
That's the other thing about modularization is that one thing affects five others, right?
I gotta change this because it doesn't work.
Well, then you just change five other things to make that thing fit because it's so compact.
And so that's kind of skill sets really hard to find.
uh What I look for is the experience in a certain field like electrician, uh
It could be plumbing, could be general assembly type stuff.
And then are they, do they have the aptitude to kind of think out of the box on how to apply stuff versus just the way they're doing it, right?
And I've seen both.
I've seen really great electricians, master electricians, they make great supervisors on the floor because they really know how to get stuff done.
They're used to multitasking and all that.
But you got to have to make sure that you get the one that can kind of see out of the box and go, yeah.
That's the way the building code works, but this is not a building per se, it's an electronic device.
So you have to be a little bit more flexible with how you think about how you apply this stuff.
And that's really what I look for.
So what do your training programs look like?
Is it formal?
Is it informal?
Right now it's informal.
It's more about, you when you're in a young company like we are, it's, you know, I also look for people who can do multitasking, right?
There's no such thing as a single task.
I think as you get bigger, you want that, but I look for people who can wear four or five different hats, you know, and then okay with it.
I mean, it's an industry, I mean, it's a very good and exciting time to be in the industry.
I don't know there's how many times where you could actually change the industry, uh the way we're doing it.
But you have to have the right mindset.
What I try to do is that I want people who come to work for CDM to be happy to be here.
And what I mean by that is when you wake up on a Sunday morning, you're not going, oh gosh, got to go work tomorrow.
I want to think, oh my God, one more day of family and friends that I got to get back to work, got this to do that.
I want to be excited about doing that because you spend a lot of time there, right?
A lot of it has to do with the atmosphere that you create, the environment that you create.
And also, I think giving people the bandwidth
to make decisions, you know?
I am by no means a micromanager.
My job is to get the right people in the right place and remove roadblocks to make them successful, right?
And I'll give you an example of what I mean by what I call a good employee and an exemplary employee.
And that example would be, let's say I give you a task.
I say, okay, ABC, we need to look at ABC and see which one works best, all right?
And you come back you go look at ABC, you come back and say, okay, Ron, I looked at ABC, now I'm really gonna work.
based on my analysis, and you did a really good job on the analysis, what's next, right?
That's a good employee.
You've actually fulfilled what I asked you to do.
An exemplary employee would come back and say, you know, Ron, I looked at ABC, none of are gonna work, but I talked to Joe down the hall, he thought D might work.
Look at this, what do you think?
That's the difference.
That's what I look for, is that kind of employee.
Wow, I love that analogy.
And what you said about uh one person wearing multiple hats is actually a future trend in our industry.
So if you look, you're gonna see each role is gonna have multiple tasks that they do, not just one.
So that's gonna happen all over the industry and we're gonna see it soon.
So what's next for CDM?
Next 24 months, let's say, what bets are you making for growth, for opportunities?
Well, you know, we're going to continue on our trend.
Half the battle on this stuff is this.
I mean that in a nice way.
It's competitive battle.
It's a lot of people out there.
Anytime you have a market like this is growing, and I think it's like 19 % CAGR over the next five years, this market, you're going to have a lot of people entering the business.
And there's going be a lot of people coming in.
It'll be interesting to see who's still here in five years.
But what we're trying to do is really develop those partnerships and relationships.
Because I really think that's the opportunity is
is working with the ITOEMs, working with the NVIDIAs and the DELs and the HPs of the world and these different uh industrial manufacturers to build the batteries and the PDUs and
the power distribution.
And because it's an ecosystem.
And what we discovered even years ago when we were doing this at Compaq is that there's no one company that can do it all.
You have to have partnerships.
And so we're looking for those long-term partnerships that can help us develop that solution.
So I really think over time the solution is going to change.
how we're doing modularization today is not going to be the way it's going to be tomorrow.
And I'll use just a simple example.
If you look at what we're doing today, we're taking a box, which is a computer, we're putting it in another box, which is a rack, we're that in another box, which is a module
or a data center.
So it's a box in a box in a box.
Why are we doing that?
We're doing that because the server came from the desktops and it was a box, right?
But over time, think about if you can start eliminating those boxes, you start doing...
Some of the things that the server guys did in the early days with the blade servers where you have things that plug into different components and you could kind of remove some of
that infrastructure and simplify it, right?
Especially as the power density goes up.
I think that's where it's going to go.
But I think again, it's a system of partnerships who have expertise in those areas.
You hear a lot about 800 volt DC, right?
That's being talked about a lot for better, more efficient power distribution.
Well, that takes time to develop, right?
And so I think what you're going to see is a step function.
And so what's up for us is we're going to sell today what we've got.
We've got some very good solutions, but we want to innovate with the industry and be able to innovate as fast as the IT guys.
And I think that's the paradigm shift is that no longer can the data center become static and the IT guys just do what they do and you just go with the data center.
You have to be able to change with the IT as the IT comes out, as they go higher density, as they need different types of cooling and power requirements.
then the infrastructure, the opportunity for us in this side of the space is to innovate with them and become their new best friends.
I love it, Ron.
How do we reach you learn more about CDM?
So we are at CDmodular.com, I think CD-modular.com on our website.
And you can get all the information there on what we're doing, how we're doing it.
ah You can reach out to me, Ron, at CD-modular.com as well.
But yeah, it's all there on the website.
We are going to a lot of different shows and speaking at lot of different events, so you can kind of see us there too.
ah So we'll be at Gartner in uh December, so we'll be there.
If anybody wants to come chat, we'll be there for that.
You know, just uh different venues like that, but we're more happy to hear from you.
even if we don't, you know, there's not a fit right now for business.
I'm more than happy to talk about where Modular is going or what we can do, what you need to be cognizant of if you're looking at these types of solutions.
Thank you, Ron, for coming on the show.
I've learned a lot.
Well, no problem.
I really enjoyed it.
You take care.
Thank you.
Alrighty, that was awesome!