It feels like every headline about data centers of late focuses on the constraints and immense challenge of meeting the demand as we see AI, and LLMs specifically, gain rapid traction. With over 100 GW of net new data center demand forecasted over the next five years it’s easy to point to blockers to scaling AI, including access to power, supply chain constraints, and availability of sites. While there are many hurdles to be sure, what these headlines miss is the opportunity to increase compute within existing facilities. Many data centers today are only utilizing 50%-60% of their power allocation and could unlock 30%-60% more compute without any uptime risk through intelligent optimization.
The Real Story Behind the Numbers
Smart use of power and IT resources can increase throughput of a data center by 30%-60%. That matters whether you're operating data center facilities, running a business that depends on IT infrastructure, or just paying attention to your electric bill.
But where does this increase in compute come from? It’s actually inherent to the design of the data center. Data centers don't plan for Tuesday afternoon. They plan for the worst case scenario. They have to—reliability depends on it. But here's the rub: we operate as though it’s the worst-case everyday.
Nobody's arguing against planning for extremes—heat waves and simultaneous peaks are real risks. The issue is mistaking planning assumptions for operating reality. When you treat every day like the worst case scenario, you strand capacity that could be productive 99% of the time. PADO aims to unlock that capacity (and with it additional compute) through a holistic platform designed to make data not just accessible, not just understandable, but actionable.
What does this mean for a data center? By unlocking compute, data centers can help existing clients expand more rapidly, add additional AI services that allow them to attract enterprise clients, and increase revenue without having to expand their footprint.
Fill the Valleys, Manage the Peak
We’ve built for extreme peaks, which has left headroom during the majority of the year. Now it’s time to leverage that headroom. The solution isn't eliminating safety buffers. It's operating in the gap between worst-case planning and typical reality.
Data center operators are in a position to immediately take advantage of this gap through optimization of their facility using multiple levers.
The Cooling Lever: Deploy workloads based on actual thermal capacity by zone, not facility-wide averages. That premium zone in Row A? It's money you're leaving on the table.
The White Space Lever: Does every workload or every rack need to run at top priority? Can certain training jobs be scheduled to run in the valley instead of the peak? Strategically schedule workloads according to their criticality and profile, not just using a static provisioning.
The Power Lever: Transform backup assets—batteries, UPS, and fuel cells—from idle costs into active revenue streams. By orchestrating these for peak shaving and demand response, you monetize existing flexibility while providing utilities with a load profile that can accelerate the interconnection timeline.
The PADO platform includes all three levers and intelligent recommendations for where and when to deploy them. PADO identifies opportunities to increase compute per sqft without any risk to SLAs or uptime.
So, How Much Additional Compute Does Your Facility Have?
Unlocking additional capacity within your facility is a major decision, one that requires a solid ROI analysis. But you can't calculate ROI without a unified view of your data.
PADO eliminates the guesswork by ingesting data from every corner of your facility into an intelligent data lake. From there, our intelligence layer builds a live digital twin of your Compute, HVAC, and Power systems. This empowers you to "test drive" changes before you implement them. Want to see how much energy you’d save by adjusting the temperature by 2°F? We can model that instantly. The result is a detailed, risk-free savings roadmap that lets you move forward with confidence.
The Bottom Line
The headlines about data center constraints aren't wrong. Growth is real. Demand is accelerating. But the crisis narrative misses the opportunity sitting in plain sight: we've already built tremendous capacity. We aren't inefficient by accident; we were forced to build this way for reliability. But new tools allow us to have both reliability and efficiency. The winners of the AI race will be the ones who figure out the formula to unlock this capacity.
If you are ready to unlock your hidden capacity, let us design a strategy using 1 or multiple optimization levers. Our platform is built to provide an operational audit which presents no operational risk and will give you the technical details you need to move towards greater utilization.
