How do you build faster when no two customers need the same thing?
In this live episode of Not Your Father’s Data Center, recorded at Yotta in Las Vegas, Compass Chief Customer Officer Raymond Hawkins sits down with Peter Panfil, Vice President of Technical Business Development at Vertiv. Looking back at the days when a 100 kilowatt facility was considered large, they discuss how far the industry has come and what it takes to keep up.
Together, they explore why speed to capacity matters, how offsite construction and repeatable designs shorten deployment, and how to plan infrastructure that stays useful through multiple generations of compute.
Key Takeaways
- Speed Starts With Decisions: Getting to capacity faster means reaching design decisions sooner and limiting the choices a customer has to make.
- Normalize, Don’t Standardize: Repeatable designs take variables off the table without forcing every customer into the same build.
- Tokenomics Adds Time to the Equation: Measuring tokens per second per megawatt rewards efficiency, performance and how quickly a site goes live.
- Future-Ready, Not Future-Proof: Reference designs built with chip manufacturers and clear interfaces between power, cooling and commissioning make it easier to swap equipment as technology changes.
- Offsite Build Supports Speed and Safety: Building the white space offsite reduces the number of trades working in the same space and creates a safer, more consistent work environment.
- Domain Expertise Matters: With direct-to-chip liquid cooling, deep knowledge of power, thermal, fluid systems and system integration is essential to performance and reliability.
About the Guest
Peter Panfil | Vice President of Technical Business Development, Vertiv
Peter Panfil has spent decades in data center power and cooling, from his early years at Liebert through its evolution into Emerson and Vertiv, including a role as Vice President of Engineering at Liebert. Today he leads Vertiv’s technical business development team, a group of domain experts in power, thermal and integrated systems who help customers plan infrastructure that is ready for what comes next.
