Evolution of Data Centers – Education, Engaging Generations and Embracing Imperfections

In this episode of Conversations with CSG, Henry Shackleton who heads up our Data Centre Recruitment team is joined by Nabeel Mahmood,  a Technologist, Futurist, Board Member and a Keynote Speaker – Nomad Futurist.

Throughout the conversation, Nabeel discusses the current trends and challenges in the data center industry, emphasizing the rapid pace of digital transformation and the critical shortage of skilled talent. He explores the concepts of edge and hyperscale data centers, offers advice for new entrants, and highlights the importance of standardization and collaboration within the industry. Nabeel and Henry also address the role of education in attracting talent and the future growth potential of the data center market, concluding with personal insights on navigating challenges and embracing imperfection.

Throughout the podcast episode, some of the focus areas we discuss include:

• Current Trends in Data Centers
• Challenges in the Data Center Industry
• Understanding Edge Data Centers
• Advice for New Entrants in the Market
• Collaboration and Standardization in Data Centers
• Philanthropy and Purpose in Technology
• Future of the Data Center Market and Talent Attraction
• Building Confidence Through Education
• Unifying the Industry for Greater Impact
• Engaging the Next Generation
• Standardizing Skills for Talent Attraction
• Addressing Power and Human Capital Challenges
• Future Growth and Quantum Computing
• Embracing Opportunities in the Data Center Industry

If you’re keen to discuss podcast insights in more detail, please get in touch with Henry Shackleton. Alternatively, if you’d like to join us as a guest on Conversations with CSG, to share market insights or tell your career journey story - please get in touch with our marketing team – csgmarketing@csgtalent.com 

Full Transcript below:

Henry Shackleton (00:32)

welcome to the CSG podcast. I'm Henry. I head up the data center team here at CSG. We work specifically within the owner operators, developers.

hyperscalers, colos and we've been following you for a couple of years and seeing where you've been, see that you're fairly influential within the industry and keen to get your thoughts on a few things. So yeah, thanks for making it happen.

Nabeel Mahmood (00:47)

Absolutely. ⁓

Absolutely.

Henry Shackleton (00:56)

So, with you being so prominent within the market at the moment and traveling the world, seeing a lot of the kind of transformational changes that are going on, what are the most exciting trends and developments that you're seeing out there at the moment?

Nabeel Mahmood (01:08)

Transas for as technology trans as for as sector itself

Henry Shackleton (01:15)

I think the technology, the sector, the growth, think everything really, you know, it seems like a pivotal time within the data centre market right now.

Nabeel Mahmood (01:20)

Yeah.

Absolutely, mean, digital transformation, that was basically a dream about five years ago. It started to happen. It's happening quite fast. Artificial intelligence, so AGI and the technologies that...

a step forward and moving at quite dramatic pace. Never really expected that we're going to be moving that fast, I mean from 2020 to 2025. Sort of like a hockey stick effect, but then again on the same note, that's resulted into a human capital deficit. We don't have enough people to address the 300,000 people shortage that we've got currently. And then...

Henry Shackleton (01:53)

Mm-hmm.

Nabeel Mahmood (01:59)

people exiting as well. There's a lot of people retiring, they're coming off age. So that's a bit scary, right? ⁓ I see...

Henry Shackleton (02:06)

Yeah.

Nabeel Mahmood (02:07)

some challenges besides the human capital piece in carbon, for instance, in sustainability charters. That's not really clear as to where we're going. And with the pace that we're developing and growing the infrastructure, a part of the challenge is that we don't have the right regulations and compliance standards globally. And that's going to potentially be a catastrophe if we don't start addressing those today in the very near future.

Henry Shackleton (02:31)

Okay, and you know with those kind of tariffs and those global situations now is that something that you feel that the whole market needs to come together on or do think it could be kind of dealt with on a regional basis, know country by country?

Nabeel Mahmood (02:47)

mean tariffs are tariffs, right? I mean we don't necessarily need to get into the whole political discussion. I think everyone's concerned, worried, and or have a strategy as it entails with a particular region or country's concern. And that's the cost of doing business. I believe the biggest charter that needs to be addressed is the data sovereignty.

Henry Shackleton (02:52)

Yeah. ⁓

Nabeel Mahmood (03:07)

and the right to use data and privacy of the users and enterprise.

Henry Shackleton (03:11)

Yeah, absolutely. And you know, for the past sort of four five years that I've been networking within this market, we've found recently, the real sort of funds behind it and kind of the growth areas, everyone seems to be chasing the hyperscale builds. Where do you see the next growth opportunities within the data center market, whether that be in the US or on a global platform?

Nabeel Mahmood (03:31)

So, primary markets like the US and the UK, they're going to start slowing down a bit because of capacity limitations. We're going to see significant investments and growth in Australasia and Africa.

Henry Shackleton (03:42)

Okay, and in terms of the developments themselves, do you still see investment and opportunities within edge data centers and kind of enterprise data centers outside of the sort of hyperscale builds?

Nabeel Mahmood (03:43)

and of course the Middle East.

Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, it's kind of interesting. mean, what is an edge data center? There's no people in the market have actually tried to, particularly I would say the marketeers are trying to confuse the space so much. An edge data center is a data center. A cloud data center is not up in the ether. It is a data center. It's a physical building. A hyperscaler is

Henry Shackleton (04:09)

Yeah.

Nabeel Mahmood (04:17)

No different than an enterprise space and or a co-location or holds the environment. It is a data center at the end of the day It's the application stock and the distribution of application. That's a bit different They might have cloud services centralized versus decentralized computing a data center is a data center is a data center But we have made it so really difficult

for people to understand, that's creating the deficit and confusion. What do we do? mean, cloud's not open to either, is it? It's actually, it's a physical building somewhere. Well, what is a hyperscale data center? It is just a data center. So whether it be an IDF, MDF, whatever the case might be, it's all an environment that's computing data, and that's a data center.

Henry Shackleton (04:44)

No, It's in a hyperscale data center build. Yeah, yeah.

I guess...

I guess the Edge, my understanding of Edge when we kind of came into it was it was a more achievable deployment of data sensors. You could use existing buildings on a smaller scale as opposed to having the power demands for a 100 megawatt development, if you like.

but it feels like that market has kind of subsided slightly in the wake of these hyperscale developers gobbling up the land and the power and the demand in certain markets.

Nabeel Mahmood (05:26)

Yes and no. is always going to be there. Edge has always been there. The idea behind Edge Computer, Edge Data Center really is that you get closer to the user so you can get data faster through the user. So it's sort of like a node basically at the end of the day, but it is a data center.

So, again, going back to over five decades of computing data center history, every decade we go close to the user, then we come back. And there's going to be information that's going to need to be processed for faster speed of data closer to the user, and that's the data that's going to reside in an edge environment.

Henry Shackleton (05:53)

Yeah.

Okay, do you see that as a growth area in the market at the moment?

Nabeel Mahmood (06:05)

Absolutely yes. I mean it's subset of the core sector, right? We are going to need to get closer to the user. Think of it this way. What is this?

What is this device? ⁓

Henry Shackleton (06:16)

Yeah, telephone. The heart of everything. ⁓

Nabeel Mahmood (06:18)

No, it's a data center. It is basically a data center.

And the reason why I say that is because you are going to be actually, and you currently do, process data on your mobile device.

Henry Shackleton (06:28)

Yeah, with a server in a tiny little micro server.

Nabeel Mahmood (06:30)

So.

Exactly. The data center is probably your house. It's another node. What's the user experience like these days? You want information now and you want information at your fingertips.

Henry Shackleton (06:38)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Okay.

Nabeel Mahmood (06:48)

Just out of curiosity,

Henry Shackleton (06:49)

So getting back to if you were a new entrant into the data center market what would your advice be to differentiate yourself from other owner-operators?

Nabeel Mahmood (06:59)

If I was a new entrant, as it entails to a provider,

The biggest thing that needs to be addressed, and the differentiator would be, in my opinion, is to address the efficiency ratios. And what I mean by that is that we've got so much stranded capacity in the existing designs and approaches that results into significant wastage, both financially and a negative impact to the planet. So, build like you're playing Legos.

Lego blocks. mean, it's sort of like, I mean, you go to buffet, right? You don't want to eat everything. You can't really eat everything. Pick and choose what you're going to eat. Don't waste. So have that as a mindset. And build a model that's basically scalable as the needs change, whether it be for the business or the market. Measure everything.

So scopes one, two, three, measure everything and share that data with your customers because carbon is a big issue. Sustainability is a big issue and we need to look forward. We can't keep doing what we have been doing for the last four decades of compute. So build a model that's scalable and build a model that's sustainable.

Henry Shackleton (08:08)

Okay,

do you think that comes down to how we build these sites as well to almost standardise a building format so that we can actually build these efficiently, you know, even competitors coming together and developing a format that works and you can land and expand quickly and more effectively and more efficiently.

Nabeel Mahmood (08:27)

Absolutely.

Yeah, so, you know, I typically have given this example of Elon Musk I mean any any political or personal biases aside The fact the matter is that he actually put Tesla on the roadmap, right? Nobody I mean nobody really knew before he acquired it The whole EV Charter was killed in all primary markets in the early 90s

And the way he went about that is like, here's my intellectual property, here's what we're doing. Like it, build it, be my competitors. What do we have in a data center? I there's no bloody intellectual property that we've got. It's four walls, race floor or slab, racks, servers, routers, switches, networking equipment, some thermal management, that's very basic.

Henry Shackleton (09:02)

you

Nabeel Mahmood (09:10)

What's the intellectual property?

Nothing. Everybody builds the same thing. It lights out operation. So why don't we share any advancements across the board? There's plenty of business. I guarantee you. There's so much business that no one's going to hurt anyone's feelings or take business away from anyone. I mean, the challenge that we've got right now is the fact that we don't have enough supply. There isn't enough power that's available. So let's continue

to standardize and build together. Everyone's going to get their fair share.

Henry Shackleton (09:39)

And that

would also mitigate kind of supply chain issues, I guess, that we're all experiencing in these markets where people, competitors are making similar products, delivering at the same time in the same way. So why don't we standardize that and go, whether it's Vertiv or Schneider or whoever it is, this is how we want our products. That's how we do it. And we build it together as a data center collective industry standard.

Nabeel Mahmood (09:45)

Absolutely.

Absolutely. Yeah, I mean let's look outside of a vertical for a minute. The EV market. There is Tesla, is Polestar, there is a bunch of other electric vehicle manufacturers. They have not had a negative impact on anyone's business. I they have earned their rights and their stripes. So why can't we do the same thing in our space?

Henry Shackleton (10:27)

Yeah, absolutely. And that kind of leads me onto our sort of next area,

Nabeel Mahmood (10:32)

Santiago

⁓

Henry Shackleton (10:34)

tell me what you are working on the board, it's the Nomad that you're working on.

Nabeel Mahmood (10:39)

so I'm the managing director of CEO of Nomad Futures, which is a non-profit organization. I do sit on the advisory council with infrastructure masons. Infrastructure masons were started to partially address the human capital piece, but really work on the social accord and the climate accord. And our strategic partnership is to address in a very systematic way. I'm a firm believer of habits and muscle memory.

I believe that starts very early on in our lives. We end up being who...

or where we grew up and who we surround ourselves with. So our charter as a non-profit or philanthropy organization is to demystify technology for the masses and create the level of understanding where we do things for the right reasons, not just to do them. And eventually that's going to result into taking corrective actions as people grow up or mature, whether it be sustainability, climate accord or social accord. So the collaboration between the two organizations is that we pass that knowledge

the tribal knowledge that we have accumulated as a sector early on. We build those good memories, muscle memories early on so people do the right thing for the right reasons versus continue to put band-aids that the existing accord is, right? I mean, something is broken, fix it, put money and people on it, fix it and move on. Yet we don't know the intercomplexities of the equation that you might think that you have fixed one thing but it's actually disrupting and breaking others. And that's where we're heading. So that's what really

the collaboration is to work 360 degrees in every single potential angle that we do things for the right reason.

Henry Shackleton (12:17)

where

did this start your sort philanthropic sort of activities?

Nabeel Mahmood (12:23)

As it entails to me, I was a corporate guy for a long time, got sucked into the corporate culture, chasing the wrong thing for the wrong reasons. And some personal changes in life that is like I've had three heart attacks in the last 11 years, been dead a couple of times, been on life support, walked away with multiple surgeries, with the incision of stents and pacemaker to extraction of the stent and the pacemaker and getting a quadruple bypass.

different perspective in life. We're not supposed to be doing, least in my humble opinion, what the society and the social influence continue to teach us and promote. No one's going to remember that I built the baddest data center or technology stack if I don't make the history books, right? ⁓

Henry Shackleton (13:05)

Yeah.

Nabeel Mahmood (13:05)

And what's our purpose here? I believe our purpose is actually to be fair to the planet, the life that we've been given and potentially try to make this place a better place and just generally do good things, good things for each other and everybody around us, for the humankind and help improve the quality of life in society.

Henry Shackleton (13:24)

yeah, there's an incentive right there. I wasn't aware so thanks for enlightening me on that. With regards to your previous corporate history, you'll have seen the huge investment that's come into the data center market, and more recently, AI. Do you feel that this sort of market is at the risk of the kind of bubble bursting here?

Nabeel Mahmood (13:45)

I don't believe so. mean, we've had a couple of instances since 2000. I believe we have been shored up as a society and a sector. We are not just spending money to spend money. I mean, of course, there are people and companies out there in private equity and VCs that don't mind the high risk, high return, but that's the nature of the game. I really don't believe that this is going to burst anytime soon. Now, nothing is 100%.

The fact of the matter is that if we can continue to do what we're doing without making some of basic changes pertaining to carbon neutrality charters, the social record charters, and not having enough power.

that's potentially going to result into some challenges, but not from a financial distress, from the climate accord piece. So I do see, at least for the next decade, the market to be steady and growing at the category that it's been growing.

Henry Shackleton (14:43)

Okay, and with that in mind, mean, you we've obviously seen an upward trajectory in kind of the pace in which this has grown. One of the biggest areas, which I'm sure you get asked all the time, is the talent attraction and retention part, which, is causing issues, certainly from a headhunter point of view, you know, we come across it on a daily basis. What do you feel we could do as an industry to attract more people?

And also diversity, something that we're missing in this market. Is there something you could do, something we could do to attract more diversity into this market?

Nabeel Mahmood (15:16)

Absolutely.

So one of the things that we are doing as Norma Futurist as a ⁓ foundation is to demystify technology for the masses. So why don't you want to get into medical space at your age? Like why can't Henry be a doctor or a surgeon? You can be. And the reason why you won't do it because it's complicated. There is that fear factor. It's just human psychology. It's so bloody difficult. I don't want to learn another trade.

I've not grown around it. So there is that lack of comfort. So one of things that we are doing is actually we are trying to make education free and accessible to anybody and everybody globally. So we launched an academy earlier this year with the idea of demystifying it and then providing tools and resources for younger generation or generation that's ready to get in the workforce or people that are in transition.

whereby it creates that level of self-confidence that I can start learning at a fourth grade level and I'm not going to be judged and it's going to be simple enough that I can get the basics and general ideas of how technology works and potentially find a fit myself. I mean that's how kids grow up into being adults and getting into the workforce. mean we see that around us every day.

And then one of the other things that we're trying to do is actually eat our own dog food. And what I mean by that is that we are a data-driven sector. Everything is ones and zeros, bunch of ones and zeros, right? So if we've got some sort of user engagement and they're coming into our space, let's put career pathways in front of them. And let's give them a platform that they can scale up and scale up from. So that's really our charter. What the industry needs to do

actually instead of doing all of these

philanthropy efforts or recruitment efforts, let's try to unify. Let's get the voice a bit louder because it sort of gets lost with all the social media hype and all the platforms that are currently available. And there's no really competition. Let's come together as one and create these standards and make resources available to people. So give an example. Back in the day, there used to be a town whisperer. Does that job exist?

Henry Shackleton (17:00)

Mm-hmm.

Nabeel Mahmood (17:19)

I would answer it no but yes

Henry Shackleton (17:21)

No.

Nabeel Mahmood (17:25)

So the Town Whisperer is not walking your city block telling the town what happened the day before. You've got that available right here on your mobile device. Everybody now is a Town Whisperer, right? The Town Whisperer job, though, might have diminished, has actually created a lot more jobs. It's actually helped us build a data center, right? So the challenge that we have, particularly in our sector, is that jobs that existed yesterday potentially won't exist

Henry Shackleton (17:37)

Mm-hmm.

Nabeel Mahmood (17:53)

today or tomorrow. But they are redefining jobs, they're creating more opportunities than they did yesterday. So, did you actually have a Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer yesterday? No. Today you do. That might change into Chief Artificial Augmented Generative Intelligence tomorrow. mean, that title, that role, that responsibility is going to change, right?

Henry Shackleton (18:06)

Yeah, yeah.

Nabeel Mahmood (18:16)

So we need to be able to provide tools for people to not only scale up, but scale up as well. And that requires you building those pathways. So that's one of the things that we're doing and that's where the industry needs to come together. We also need to get away as a sector from the mindset of my product, my service is better than everybody else, and it's unique. No, it's not. It's not. I mean, let's take a look at computer room air conditioning. What does it do at the core of it? It cools the room.

Henry Shackleton (18:42)

Yeah.

Nabeel Mahmood (18:42)

It's just a air conditioner. Now you might do a few things better. You might actually put different fan drives, different motors, motors that are probably more energy efficient. You might change coils from round coils to oval coils for better velocity, better pressure. Those are details. But at that core of it, thermal management is thermal management is thermal management.

Henry Shackleton (18:44)

You

Nabeel Mahmood (19:05)

make it easy, make it uniform and share information across organizations, across platforms without it being branded as one company or another. So what is that going to do?

Henry Shackleton (19:17)

And do

you feel enough is being done at the grass root level that even kind of within schooling and college and those kind of things to highlight the opportunities that there are within the data center market in terms of career opportunities, earning potentials?

And if so, at what level do you think we need to start educating more? Does it need to be started at curriculum level at high school? Is it college level? What are your thoughts on that?

Nabeel Mahmood (19:45)

So it's a very deep question. The educational sector has not changed since second industrial revolution and we are entering the fifth.

Henry Shackleton (19:54)

Right, yeah.

Nabeel Mahmood (19:55)

And the educators have not been willing to make those changes because they do not understand our sector because we've made it so bloody complicated and we do not get good media out of it. Now, to sort of like how a self-plugin over here, we are taking the approach and the way we define it is there's three different areas that need to be addressed. There's immediate need, there's a short-term need, and then the long-term.

The immediate need is to get people into the space very quickly. Industries around us are shrinking. There is exodus in lot of other industries because of technology being adapted. Let's just pick up on agriculture and logistics. I mean, we've got drones with AI integrated in it that are...

managing farms now, before we would have several hundred people walking the farm to collect data and then make human decisions. Those people could be potentially brought into our space. All we need is a bit of education and experience. The second phase is the college students. That's the workforce that's got to be replacing the existing deficit.

and no one's telling about data centers. So I'll give you an example. Last year, we were actually at an event at Data Cloud Congress in the United States. And I had brought in roughly about 20 plus students from the University of Texas Arlington that were mechanical engineers, electrical engineers, and nuclear engineers that were getting ready to get into the workforce. And they had zero idea what a data center was.

Yet, when they came at the conference and started meeting and started actually just grabbing the basic ideas, they were extremely excited. I would say about 35 % of them actually entered into the workforce and working in data centers now. The same thing applies to the younger generation. They do not know. I mean, they're being taught, oh, you've got to be a doctor, you've got to be a dentist, you've got to be a firefighter, you've got to be an attorney.

No one's saying that you gotta get in the data center space. So the way we are going about it is that we actually go out globally speaking and participate in parent-teacher conferences. We've got education days, we've got industry days. So we will go and speak and engage at schools, colleges, universities around the world. As a matter of fact, yesterday we were in Portland, Oregon with roughly about 400 educators across

Portland Community Colleges that had no idea what a data center was. We took maybe about 24, 25 of them to visit the data center locally as well. Guess what? They end up becoming our advocates. So they're actually going to be sharing it within their local communities, what a data center means, what it does, how does it affect our lives, and they're also going to be sharing that information with their students. That's an opportunity for us to come back again visit them. So what does the industry need to do? Industry needs to work with organizations

like us that are committed to actually spreading the word and getting our voice louder and sharing what this really means to the existing society and the culture and what do we need to do for tomorrow.

Henry Shackleton (22:40)

Mm-hmm.

And I guess does that almost kind of tie back also to standardizing the approach to actually how we develop these, you know, to look at even if you're not that qualified, we could do a skills first type, you know, entry into the market. If we standardize the way we develop these, it makes it less intimidating for somebody to come in and feel they've got an opportunity within the data center market. I guess that all is tied together in terms of talent attractiveness.

better economics and actually better for the environment as well.

Nabeel Mahmood (23:20)

Absolutely.

Yeah, standardization for us as a sector is imperative.

Henry Shackleton (23:25)

Okay. And, you know, looking at over the past sort of five years, I know we've talked about the trajectory of the kind of growth over the last sort of 10, 15 years, but over the last five years, we've seen deal sizes go from, you know, tens of megawatts to a hundred megawatts to now multiple gigawatts. With the power constraints and skill shortage and supply chain demands, where do you see this industry in the next five years?

Nabeel Mahmood (23:51)

Well, mean if you can't see the money is cheap money is easy ⁓ So I'm gonna say that's not the problem We do have as you mentioned to core Concerns that need to be addressed Start a power. I mean connectivity fine water. Okay

Henry Shackleton (23:56)

Yeah.

Nabeel Mahmood (24:08)

The power is a major concern. So what's holding us back is the lack of power, the lack of the utilities upgrading their infrastructure globally. What some of the recent changes, as we've seen with the current political climate and no political bias over here, but the current US administration are approving 400 gigawatts of power, nuclear that have been sitting.

you know, forever the executive order whereby it's okay to build nuclear. They started to change a few things around, at least in the primary market, such as the United States, which of course has a significant influence in other markets as well, that people are going to start thinking, okay, well, we can't actually get power the way we used to. We've got to make some major changes, whether it be hydrogen, natural gas, nuclear, whatever the case might be. Let's explore those opportunities.

So that's potentially going to open the floodgates to start building more. But that's at least five years out. I do see within the next five to ten years that we're going to continue to building even more.

last piece of puzzle is the human capital deficit. We don't have enough people. And it's not people at the compute layer, it's people at the physical layer. So we need mechanics, we need plumbers, we need builders, we need the blue collar jobs. And that's where we are going to run into problems. So what's that going to do? That's going to increase the cost of building significantly.

which is okay I guess, but I also believe that that's going to result into secondary and emerging markets come to the forefront. So for instance, Kenya is a good example. Kenya never actually existed as a technology country on the roadmap.

I just found out yesterday that there is 30 gigawatts of free power or accessible power right now in Kenya. So guess what? The hyperscaler is going to start looking into that area. But what's the problem there? Okay, so we can build it cheap. We've got power there. We've got the government support. We've got the land. But what is it that we do not have? We don't have the human capital. And how many expats are going to move to Kenya? Not very many.

We need to build local, right? So where are those local resources coming from? Well, they don't have the skillset, they don't have the education, so now those projects are going to come on a screeching halt. Or we're going to start funding resources from abroad and they're going to cost an arm and a leg. So the cost to build is going to be as much as it's going to be in Northern California or Northern Virginia. So what's the advantage, right? So we've got to build those skillsets globally and get people

that are local to the region to be a part of the space.

Henry Shackleton (26:45)

And I guess that ties back to what you're doing at the moment in order to kind of get those guys up skilled within the next five years.

Nabeel Mahmood (26:51)

Absolutely.

Henry Shackleton (26:51)

And do you see the next growth, do you see it continuing in the same trajectory or is it going to kind of tail off do you believe?

Nabeel Mahmood (26:57)

I believe it's going to continue growing. mean, know, theoretically speaking, or at least some numbers that I've read, are sub 40 % of the entire world being connected with some sort of a device that connects to the internet or compute. I believe by 2050, with over 9.2 billion people, everyone's going to be connected. There's going to be an internet bubble.

So what does that tell you? I mean, it's a very good story. We haven't even gone halfway through just from a connectivity perspective. let's start thinking about the application stack. I the number of applications are going to rise from 25 million applications in the Apple and Google Store to 250 million applications by 2050. What does that tell you? Data consumption data usage is going to be much higher. Currently, I think I did a study that

an average user around the world is processing roughly about 2 gigabytes of data a month. A fairly large number. By 2050 it's supposed to be 2 terabytes with all the connected devices that we're all going to have. So what does that mean? More data centers, more data sets, more technology. And that means that we're going to be growing at that hockey stick effect for a period of time. Now...

not necessarily make things complicated, but I also believe within the next years there's going to be a major shift in the industry. And that shift is going to be moving from HPC's environment of what we are seeing right now with Nvidia chips and high-power computing, so on and so forth, the drag density is increasing, to a potential move to quantum computing.

which would be a redefinition of the industry. yeah, we're have this Hockey Stick Effect, a stabilization curve, and then as quantum is streamlined and mass distributed, there's going to be a re-architecture of how we've actually built data centers, or how we're going to build the future state of the data centers. And then at that point in time, we're going to see another Hockey Stick Effect.

Henry Shackleton (28:41)

Yeah and again I guess another skill shortage issue a little bit there supply chain people getting up to speed with what quantum computing is and what components go into a quantum compute yeah interesting times ahead.

Nabeel Mahmood (28:45)

Exactly.

Mm-hmm.

Absolutely. Yes, I think our lifetime is amazing. I mean we are building the future. am concerned, certainly concerned about the next generation, the generation after. So we've got to build those muscle memories today. We've got to build that education platform today.

Henry Shackleton (28:57)

Yeah.

I think that's a message to your kids isn't it? It's a great industry to be part of, it's totally future proof, there's great opportunities within it so let's start it now and then see where that can be in the next 20, 30 years from here.

Nabeel Mahmood (29:22)

Exactly.

I mean, I think you make a great point. think from future proofing, if I was to compare us to any other sector or vertical would be food and beverage. I mean, you eat in bad times, you drink in bad times, and you eat a lot more in good times, and you drink a lot more when you're happy.

Henry Shackleton (29:31)

Yeah.

Yeah yeah yeah so let's stay happy then right?

Nabeel Mahmood (29:40)

Exactly, you're going to consume

data no matter what, good, bad or ugly times. Data is now a part of your DNA.

Henry Shackleton (29:45)

Yeah, yeah.

It's easier than being a doctor as well though, right?

Nabeel Mahmood (29:50)

much easier, absolutely, a lot more funner.

Henry Shackleton (29:52)

Yeah, yeah,

yeah, fun, easy, good opportunities I think is a no brainer.

Nabeel Mahmood (29:58)

Absolutely.

Henry Shackleton (29:59)

By the way, I saw your golf shot this morning on LinkedIn. Yeah, yeah.

Nabeel Mahmood (30:03)

The Happy Gilmore 2, yes that was in honor of

Happy himself, yes.

Henry Shackleton (30:08)

How many takes did that take?

Nabeel Mahmood (30:10)

⁓ That was one take. I mean I'm an alright golfer, think probably like a plus point one right now. I've got good hand and eye coordination.

Henry Shackleton (30:13)

Nice.

Yeah,

happy days. certainly looked like it on that angle anyway.

Nabeel Mahmood (30:24)

Yeah, there was no media frenzy or any charged GBT or media modification. was what it was. No AI.

Henry Shackleton (30:30)

Yeah, yeah. There was no AI.

Good. Well look, thanks very much I do have a closing question that we always ask on this podcast. What is the most valuable piece of advice that you've ever received throughout your career?

Nabeel Mahmood (30:47)

boy, I mean there's a lot of them, but if I was to pass this on to anybody, let your imperfection be your perfection. I mean, we don't have the right answers, be transparent, be open to learning, and there's no right way of doing it. Believe in yourself and do it, and you'll find the right tools, the right people, the right mentors.

to help get you back to where you need to be. And don't be afraid of anything. Just do it.

Henry Shackleton (31:11)

Thanks.

And who gave you that advice or is that one of yours?

Nabeel Mahmood (31:15)

It's a combination of things and experiences, I would certainly give my dad lot of that credit.

I mean, there's a lot of blending in from different talks and advices. My dad used to tell me one thing, and that is, if you don't risk anything, you risk everything. So, just do it. I mean, get your data points and make the decision. There's no reason to sit on things. If your heart is the right place, it will lead you to the right place. You might make mistakes along the way, but don't let them hold you back.

Henry Shackleton (31:21)

Nice.

Love that, Nabeel Thank you very much.

Nabeel Mahmood (31:46)

Absolutely.

Henry Shackleton (31:46)

Well look, thank you again. I appreciate that you're busy. I'll leave you in peace at 5.40 this morning. Your time.

Nabeel Mahmood (31:53)

brilliant. This has actually certainly been a lot of fun.

Henry Shackleton (31:55)

Yeah

Will do, thank you very much, I've really enjoyed it.

alright,