Brooke Zalud, Market Segment Manager for the IT and Telecommunication division of Ziehl-Abegg, has published a commentary arguing that data center cooling systems must be designed around workload ranges rather than fixed design points. The piece contends that liquid cooling does not replace air cooling, noting that air cooling will still be required for the remaining 20 to 30 percent of white and grey space even in liquid-cooled deployments. Zalud recommends zoning, modular capacity additions, and coordinated controls that allow retrofits without facility downtime. The commentary advocates for reserving physical space for future piping, manifolds, heat exchangers, and pumps before those components are needed.
As AI workloads push rack densities higher and hardware roadmaps shift rapidly, cooling infrastructure decisions made today can constrain or enable future facility upgrades; the argument for hybrid air-and-liquid readiness reflects a growing industry recognition that no single cooling medium will serve all deployments. Designing retrofit readiness as a day-one requirement has direct cost implications, since facilities that cannot add cooling capacity within an existing footprint may face earlier and more expensive reconstruction.
Future-proofing cooling infrastructure for unpredictable AI density growth is a core operational concern for the industry right now, and Data Center Frontier's framing around designing for the unknown signals substantive technical or strategic content.