Video: 10 Minute IT Jams - SoftIron CMO on Data Center Sustainability

Efficiency is everything in the modern data centre.

Increasingly, companies are under pressure to scale their data management capabilities while also cutting their carbon emissions and keeping costs in check. Speaking on the "10-Minute IT Jams" podcast, Andrew Maloney, Chief Marketing Officer at SoftIron, shared how his company is tackling these challenges through a distinctive approach to hardware and software design.

SoftIron specialises in manufacturing appliances for scale-out data centres. Maloney explained that the company's uniqueness comes from building products "from the ground up, from the component level all the way up through the hardware and software we manufacture ourselves." This level of control, he said, "unlocks some incredible capabilities in terms of efficiency and performance."

The need for such innovation has become increasingly urgent. Data centres are major power consumers and, Maloney noted, are sometimes unable to physically accommodate more energy input or remove excess heat. As businesses set their sights on net-zero emissions, the importance of efficiency in IT infrastructure grows, becoming a focal point for both operational viability and environmental responsibility.

SoftIron's methodology stands in sharp contrast to the industry norm. Maloney described the familiar model as "fundamentally broken," with vendors "taking generic designs, sub-assemblies, bolting them all together, adding some software on top and delivering a product to the market." In this traditional model, he pointed out, "there's a whole range of benefits you're leaving untapped" - not least when it comes to sustainability and reliability.

Instead, SoftIron's process involves rethinking systems at the most granular level. "We design products from the ground up, from every line of source code, and take complete control of those designs," Maloney said. The result is "an unparalleled level of transparency to the entire product realisation process."

This transparency addresses an emerging concern: supply chain resilience. Organisations are "getting really concerned with the supply chain resilience and the amount of obscurity there is in the IT supply chain," Maloney said.

But perhaps SoftIron's biggest impact comes from its drive towards energy efficiency. As Maloney explained, legacy data centre appliances are "built on very generic designs...designed to do a raft of different tasks," inevitably resulting in "an incredible amount of inefficiency."

Rather than layering more software atop pre-existing hardware, SoftIron takes an open source core—in the case of storage, the widely used Ceph platform—and re-engineers it for specific tasks. "We reverse engineered it fundamentally to figure out what would really make Ceph fly," he explained. The result: a purpose-designed product optimised for one job, consuming "80 percent less power in some cases than a generic appliance might in doing the same kind of task."

That energy reduction pays dividends beyond shrinking power bills. Using less energy generates less heat, meaning less demand for cooling, which further improves the reliability of hardware. "By using less power, that means you're generating less heat. If there's less heat then you don't need to cool your data centre in the same way, but also the reliability of the product improves," Maloney said.

SoftIron's management of the entire development and manufacturing process also enables them to add "a level of enterprise class simplicity to deploying what would otherwise be quite a complex but very powerful software-defined storage platform," he added.

The environmental gains are significant. Maloney shared recent analysis comparing SoftIron's carbon footprint to industry averages, pointing out that for a 10 petabyte storage installation, the company could realise "a saving of something like six and a half thousand tonnes of carbon over the lifetime of the product." He defined this as "a huge impact…something which generally you're just not seeing in the IT industry these days."

This progress comes as IT teams feel heightened pressure to deliver on sustainability pledges. "IT is now under a lot of pressure in many organisations to deliver its part of net zero plans, for example," he said. "We're seeing that around the world…senior management [is] challenging IT to do their part."

Beyond efficiency and sustainability, resilience is a major concern, especially in the Asia-Pacific region where supply chain disruptions have been acute since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. "Resilience has become a really important challenge as well," Maloney noted.

SoftIron's manufacturing model is also distinctive. Rather than building at one central site, the company deploys "edge manufacturing" - smaller-scale production facilities located close to key consumer markets. "We're adding manufacturing capability local to where our consumers are which enables us to tap into the local supply chain at an increasing rate as well," Maloney said. The company is about to bring its Sydney facility online, which he believes will make it "the first computer company to actually build, ground up, component-level up, computers of any description on Australian soil, maybe for 40 years or more."

This move, he said, is part of a broader effort to embed the company within local regions. COVID-19 prompted SoftIron to adopt a "globally distributed but locally embedded" organisational model. Maloney outlined, "We wanted to be relevant in the key markets around the world where we want to serve customers," so the company has built up "infrastructure across all of the functions of the business, not just sales and marketing and manufacturing... but also engineering and support."

SoftIron recently announced a new office in Singapore to complement its existing presence in Australia and New Zealand, and plans to continue expanding its regional footprint. "You'll see us continue to grow our footprint across all those functions and with very senior global roles...already based in APAC," Maloney said.

Looking to the future, Maloney is optimistic that SoftIron's approach will lead to a wholesale rethink of how data centre infrastructure is designed and delivered. "There's all sorts of benefits that you're able to deliver," he concluded. "We're very excited about what's ahead."