Bringing the Voice of Sales to ISC West
Welcome to the third episode of Voice of Sales, a new series dedicated to our sales team who turn complex security challenges into seamless architectural realities.
Mike McGovern, VP Data Center Business Development, shares how the rapid growth of AI is fundamentally redrawing the blueprints of the modern data center. Discover how the rise of hyperscale campuses and “Dark” Data Centers is driving a strategic shift toward the edge. By bringing technologies together into a unified processing flow with Orion DataGuard™, Mike explains how Orion is helping clients visualize a future where intelligent automation masters the challenge of exponential growth while maximizing ROI.
From your perspective, what are the biggest security challenges data centers are facing today?
Data centers are dealing with a tremendous increase in capacity demand due to the AI boom. Data center professionals are looking ahead to tremendously increased capacity requirements. In the past, 3 or 4 buildings would be a common campus, and today, a typical campus may have 10 to 15 buildings and the capacity required of these data centers is growing exponentially.
Data center designers and developers are being asked to create these tremendously large data centers, with limited staffing plans. The idea is to design and build super large data centers and at the same time reduce the staff that would be required to run these data centers. “Dark” data centers are the future.
Meanwhile data center security designers are being asked to “move security to the edge” as the developers try to find ways to leverage new and coming technologies with less human intervention. A typical data center campus is being planned today with most security presence at the edge of the data center complex, and fewer security staff at the building level.
This shift is driven by a fundamental financial discussion: CapEx vs. OpEx. While a manual security presence represents a recurring operational expense, a strategic investment in automated capital technology can offset those costs permanently, resulting in substantial ROI (Return on Investment).
What operational pressures are data center operators feeling right now that weren’t as prominent a few years ago?
Moving security to the edge was not a focus previously because the cost of security staff was relatively low and technology had not yet progressed to current levels.
Hyperscale campuses can have footprints of more than 1,000,000 square feet with planned capacities over 1000MW or 1 Gigawatt (GW). To maintain operational efficiency, developers are adopting ‘Dark’ data center strategies, to replace or dramatically reduce the need for human intervention and to leverage automated systems to secure the perimeters of such massive campuses.
Why was it important for Orion to demonstrate and engineered turnkey automated entry room instead of just displaying components?
Data Center security consultants, engineers, integrators and end users count on their technology providers to be able to coordinate their products and cooperate to create a complete package that is easy to implement and drop into a security entrance control design.
With DataGuard™ bringing the technologies together, we are able to help potential clients and their designers to see how the products work together as one system.
If you had to summarize DataGuard in one sentence for an operator evaluating the potential ROI, what would you say?
Orion DataGuard™ is a modular, automated, remote–monitored security entrance control system, that is customizable and fully configurable, designed to help generate ROI through reduced security staffing needs.
Thank you to Mike for sharing his deep industry expertise and strategic vision for the future of data center security.
At Orion, we believe that the most successful security solutions are those built on a foundation of deep industry expertise and a commitment address client realities. We look forward to continuing these conversations at ISC West later this month.
Stay tuned as we bring you more valuable insights from our sales leaders who are driving partnerships and shaping entrance security solutions across the country.