From Pioneers to Leaders: 60 Years of IT Cooling Expertise
- Theme
- Manufacturing innovation
- Reading time
- 6:00
- Published
- By
- Nicola Drewe
Sixty years ago, we set out on a mission to revolutionise IT cooling—and today, we celebrate six decades of innovation, expertise, and commitment to keeping the world's data running smoothly. From these beginnings to becoming a trusted name in the data centre industry, our journey reflects the evolution of technology itself, and we're just getting started.
Data Centres are critical for our society.
We understand that data centres are vital to ensure the smooth operation of modern society, housing critical systems like servers and telecommunications equipment. To function reliably, they require precise cooling solutions to prevent overheating, data loss, or costly downtime. This ensures critical data and information pertaining to health, security and safety for example remains accessible.
Whether you’re cooling a single server or an entire room, maintaining the right temperature is essential.
To celebrate this amazing milestone I spoke to Mike Hayes, Applications Specialist at FläktGroup, about how the industry has changed in this time.
I must add, he is not old enough to recall the full sixty years! But with 47 years of designing computer air conditioning systems, he has a wealth of experience to share.
“Although I was not actually personally involved with cooling Charles Babbage’s “Difference Engine”, it sometimes feels like it!
Back in the day, we would work closely with “Site Preparation Specialists” from manufacturers such as Sperry Univac, Honeywell Bull or Burroughs Machines, as well as, the perhaps better known, IBM, ICL and DEC.
Before the days of BIM (Building information Modelling) and CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) the optimum layout for the 3081, PDP-11, Level 64 or VAX 11-780 processor and associated peripherals would likely be determined using the old school BMS (Beer Mat Sketch) approach! Although everybody would use these hardware references liberally, it took me years to find anybody that actually knew what PDP or VAX actually stood for!”
Met Office Bracknell - Cray Supercomputer
Of course, we cannot only look at how FlaktGroup have defined the industry but how customer demands, and worldwide expectations have changed over the years, and how we must stay ahead of this. For Mike, it is about reflection, using your knowledge, and behaving with integrity to deliver the best solutions to customers,
“…put aside all the inevitable sales and marketing speak to consider what cooling infrastructure you would actually install in your very own data centre, if you had one. This idea has served to keep my feet on the ground over the years. For the record, personally it would now always be a direct expansion (DX) system with inverter compressors and electronically commutated (EC) fans, both indoors and outdoors. A secondary “Free Cooling” circuit could at times get me down to the magical 1.05 power usage effectiveness (PUE) but whilst still retaining the reliability, flexibility and serviceability that I think can only be provided by multiple, autonomous systems.”
Denco advertisement, 1970.
As such, engineering excellence and problem solving has served as the backbone to everything we have done and is the secret to 60 years of success. Solutions are designed by engineers to be reliable, flexible, scalable as required, energy efficient and serviceable.
To back up this claim, in 2024 FläktGroup won the ‘DCS Cooling Innovation of the Year Award’ with our Hydro-DENCO. Awarded to us by the DCS Awards, celebrating excellence in the Data Centre Industry and solidifying our place as a key player in the IT cooling industry.
This was Mike’s concept, and it was always essential in his mind to create a system that was energy efficient, achieved peak performance and was unique in design and function.
“The Hydro-DENCO was always meant to be a unique product. By getting rid of many valves and dated AC motors we used Electronically Commutated (EC) type motors for everything.”
With this change in process a more energy efficient product is made, and it is a step forward for data centre cooling and air handling units. We are already thinking about the future too.