

DCD Zero Downtime: The Bi-Weekly Data Center Show
DatacenterDynamics
DCD Zero Downtime is DCD's editorially-led podcast. In each episode, our editorial team will be talking with leading members of the data center and digital infrastructure community, delving deeper into the future of the industry and its major challenges.
Episodes
Mentioned books

Jul 24, 2025 • 37min
Episode 83 - Data sovereignty and cloud competition in the UK, with Mark Boost, Civo
In this engaging discussion, Mark Boost, CEO of Civo, shares insights from his 25 years in tech, focusing on how Civo is challenging hyperscalers and promoting data sovereignty. He defines digital sovereignty's crucial role in today’s geopolitical landscape, addressing U.S. governance concerns and the impact on smaller cloud providers. The conversation also highlights ongoing challenges such as cloud repatriation and the need for collaboration among smaller players to create a more equitable cloud market. Frustrations with major providers and regulatory investigations are examined.

Jul 10, 2025 • 46min
Episode 82 – Pivoting from crypto to AI colocation with Core Scientific's Matt Brown
In this episode, we talk to Core Scientific COO Matt Brown about the company’s pivot away from housing cryptomining rigs to hosting GPUs for the likes of AI cloud firm CoreWeave.We talk about the wider crypto market and why the move to AI hosting is becoming so common, the rise of the neoclouds and why they’re willing to work with companies that might not be used to working to Tier III-quality uptime requirements, and Matt’s own experience coming to the crypto space from world of traditional colo.

Jun 12, 2025 • 24min
Episode 81 - Telecom tower opportunities in Africa and the Middle East with Sainesh Vallabh, Helios Towers
In this episode, we talk to Sainesh Vallabh, group chief commercial officer, Helios Towers, about the company’s strategic focus to drive tenants to its mobile tower infrastructure. Sainesh explains the company’s plans for the year, opportunities to look at new markets, and the challenges that Africa and the Middle East present for Helios.

May 29, 2025 • 27min
Episode 80 - Old blighty with Mike Hoy, Pulsant
In this episode, we are staying in the editorial team’s home county - the UK. Pulsant is a regional Edge provider focusing on the UK market, and has recently launched a new Sovereign Cloud offering. We talk with Pulsant’s CTO Mike Hoy about the data center industry in the UK in the context of the Labour government, how enterprise strategies are changing in relation to cloud deployments, and discuss the ongoing CMA investigation into the cloud services market.

May 22, 2025 • 42min
Bonus episode - Introducing SDxCentral, with exec editor Dan Meyer
DCD's EiC Sebastian Moss talks to SDxCentral executive editor Dan Meyer about what it means for the two publications to work together, and what we can learn about the current tech cycle from previous booms and busts.

May 15, 2025 • 30min
Episode 79 - Competing clouds with Kevin Cochrane, Vultr
With the cloud market in a constant war for market share, alternative providers to the “big three” have emerged. With 32 regions globally, Vultr has a huge worldwide reach, and claims to be able to offer core cloud services (and GPUs) at a significantly lower cost than the hyperscalers. In this episode, Kevin Cochrane joins us to discuss the cloud computing market, how Vultr is able to offer its services for less, and the company's push into AI.

May 1, 2025 • 29min
Episode 78 - Optimizing Linux to cut data center energy use, with Prof. Martin Karsten and Joe Domato, Fastly
Could changing just 30 lines of code in Linux help cut data center energy use?In this episode, we speak to Professor Martin Karsten, professor of computer science at the University of Waterloo, and Joe Domato, distinguished engineer at Fastly, about their work optimizing the Linux kernel, which could have big implications if applied by digital infrastructure operators

Apr 24, 2025 • 48min
Bonus episode - Understanding AWS' chip strategy with Gadi Hutt
In a compute world dominated by Nvidia, hyperscalers are looking to build out their own semiconductor infrastructure capable of training and inference workloads at scale.We chat to AWS product manager Gadi Hutt about his company's approach, based on its 2016 Annapurna Labs acquisition. We talk about Trainium and Inferentia, how the company balances against its GPU fleet, and what it's cooking with Anthropic and Rainier.

Apr 17, 2025 • 29min
Episode 77 - Are utilities overstating data center demand growth? Talking to Cathy Kunkel, Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis
In this episode, we talk to Cathy Kunkel, energy consultant at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, about a recent report she authored on the increased buildout of gas power plants and pipelines in the Southeast US, driven by the projected growth of data center load.

Apr 3, 2025 • 36min
Episode 76 - Start(ing) again in Portugal with Omer Wilson, Start Campus
The start campus data center project has big dreams, aiming to build a 1.2GW data center campus in Sines, Portugal. While things have progressed on the campus, its entanglement in the corruption probe that saw the Prime Minister resign and led to the arrest of several of Start’s executives including then CEO Afonso Salema caused some hiccups. With the charges now dropped (and a new CEO in place) and the first data center on the campus live, Start is back on the grind to see the project through to fruition. Omer Wilson, chief marketing officer at Start Campus, talks to DCD about the project, and addresses the issue of starting again, after such a disruption.