While I was active in several industries during my career, I never paid much attention to sustainability and energy efficiency. I did, however, while traveling in China, India, Russia, etc. asked myself many times how it is possible that we are so strict and progressive on sustainability topics in the Netherlands while in other, much bigger, countries, few people seem to care?
In 2018, my friend Vincent Houwert convinced me that we need to start developing durable products instead of disposable products. He asked me to join iXora to develop and market a durable sound system which is resistant against extreme weather conditions and energy efficient. Nowadays, we would call this a resilient product or a sustainable product, but I think you get the idea.
During our development we invented a very energy efficient amplifier (216.000 Watt) that did not need to be cooled with air. The most efficient and sustainable solution we found was full immersion cooling.
Once we showed our solution to our friend, and current CEO, Job Witteman, he immediately pointed out the need for a full immersion solution for datacenters which can fit 19” inch racks. From that moment, March 2021, the idea of the Closed Full Immersion Rack Mountable Chassis for compute was born.
In August 2022 I decided to focus full time on iXora. For me, it made sense to start with the datacenter industry. Particularly in Europe, datacenters are seen as big ugly boxes that use a lot of power and water.
The world is in the middle of the third industrial revolution and with the introduction of AI the demand for data will grow to almost 600 Zettabytes in 2030, which is about 10 times more than in 2021.
The datacenter industry is one of the leading industries to reach the global climate goals. With all the regulations for the datacenters imposed by the European and local Government, datacenters can be an example for other industries.
I can guarantee you that key players in our industry already begun with this transition and take their responsibility.
Instead of rejecting datacenters, the government and society in general should embrace the expansion of datacenters with more sustainable power- and water usage innovations.
It is time that the public opinion about datacenters will move from perceiving datacenters as a threat, to welcoming them as an opportunity.
And for those people who are still thinking, why does he keep going on about datacenters and that antiquated system of servers, what about the Cloud? To these people I say yes, dear friends, the Cloud is also stored in a datacenter.
Vincent Beek started his commercial career in 2001 as International Sales and Marketing Manager for a innovative Dutch manufacturer in the Film-, Broadcast-, Sports- and Live Entertainment Industry. In this position he built up a large global network. After 10 year he decided to start working as a Sales contractor. In this role he expanded his global network and sales skills in Marine, Offshore, Military, Aerospace and Government markets.
Vincent’s international business experience and his target driven mindset will push iXora to reach our commercial goals. With his experience our go-to market strategy is secured. He looks from a sales perspective what the market needs and how to position our products. While keeping an eye on the cost price he makes sure our products will be competitive and affordable priced.
