Tag: Schneider Electric

Artificial Intelligence (AI) infrastructure has arrived, and with it comes a new reality. Power-hungry chips like NVIDIA’s Blackwell have pushed traditional air cooling beyond its limits. Indeed, rack densities are rising from 20 kW to more than 140 kW. The 1 MW milestone is also approaching. As a result, the industry is now moving into the liquid cooling deployment phase for AI workloads.

Buildings may be getting smarter, but too many control rooms still rely on yesterday’s technology. They use on-site servers, rigid architectures and a patchwork of interfaces. These systems are expensive to run and painfully slow to evolve. While many modern buildings are marketed as “smart”, much of today’s Building Management Systems (BMS) infrastructure remains rooted in ageing, server-bound control rooms.

Tanzania and Uganda have reached an important stage in their economic development. Infrastructure investment and digital transformation are now beginning to converge across both countries. At the same time, both nations continue expanding physical infrastructure, such as energy and transport networks, while prioritising digital connectivity and services.

Today, just over 60% of Nigerians have access to grid-connected electricity. Even those who do often endure erratic service. The country’s National Bureau of Statistics reports that the average daily supply stands at less than seven hours. Yet, as Albert Einstein famously said: “In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity”. In Nigeria’s case, the convergence of renewable energy, digital innovation and Software as a Service (SaaS) can establish an energy landscape built on reliability and long-term sustainability.

The Artificial Intelligence (AI) disruptions of the past few years have only been the prologue to what is coming in 2026: AI’s full integration into data centre processes and builds. It is a moment we have been building towards since OpenAI’s ChatGPT brought Artificial Intelligence into the mainstream in late 2022. That launch sent shockwaves through academia, mental health care and every type and size of business.

For decades, Distributed Control Systems (DCS) have served as the backbone of industrial automation. They remain integral to the efficient operation of manufacturing plants worldwide. Yet, these systems have a notable limitation: the high cost and complexity of traditional I/O hardware. However, Edge I/O technology is driving a seismic shift, revolutionising the landscape of industrial automation. This shift is revolutionising DCS with Edge I/O across multiple industries.

Nigeria and other parts of West Africa are grappling with a critical shortage of skilled professionals in the power sector. The shortage is particularly severe in technical roles that organisations need to design, implement and maintain power quality and assurance solutions. This trend poses a major challenge for powering Nigeria’s future.

The last five years have placed unprecedented strain on global supply chains. Geopolitical tensions, trade wars and natural disasters have exposed vulnerabilities across industries. As a result, these challenges have become the norm rather than the exception. We have shifted from the era of “just in time” to “just in case”. In this environment, global supply chain strategy has become a central driver of resilience.

Enough cannot be said about both the historical and current importance of distributed control systems and their role in industrial automation. It is therefore only fitting that we talk about their continuous evolution and future too. For years, plants have relied on a mismatch of small Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs) and proprietary black boxes to manage localised tasks. These systems were extremely effective in their time.

Imagine walking into a factory where machines can think ahead, predict problems before it happens, and automatically make adjustments to realise peak performance. This isn’t science fiction; it’s happening right now as AI continues transforms how we run industrial operations.