The critical future of Britain’s data centres - Dawn Childs, Pure Data Centres Group

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5 • 6 Ratings

🗓️ 11 February 2025

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Dame Dawn Childs, CEO of Pure Data Centres Group, discusses the significance of the government’s decision to designate data centres as critical national infrastructure, the potential for the green energy transition to be supported, not hindered, by the power demands of AI and why Britain needs more engineers.

Pure Data Centres Group designs, builds and operates white-label data centres, with some of the world's largest tech firms as their customers. Childs joined the company in 2021 and has been its chief executive since May 2023. Before running one of Britain’s top data centre companies, Childs had a distinguished career which included engineering and executive roles at the National Grid, Gatwick Airport and the Royal Airforce.

Transcript

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0:00.0	I used to describe data centers as the physical manifestation of the cloud or the internet,
0:12.0	so where the internet lives. And I think that still holds true. It forms the lifeblood of everything digital that you do.
0:20.0	Worst case scenario, if we didn't resolve some of the planning challenges, it forms the lifeblood of everything digital that you do.
0:25.5	Worst case scenario, if we didn't resolve some of the planning challenges in the UK,
0:30.1	some of the workloads that aren't necessarily needed in the UK but could drive economic growth, will go to other countries where it's easier to build.
0:36.8	The demand for power from data centers enables in various countries, including the UK,
0:43.5	there to be a participation in the green transition or an acceleration of the green transition.
0:50.7	From the first time founders to the funds that back them, innovation needs different.
0:56.0	Our episode partner, HSBC Innovation Banking, is proud to accelerate growth for tech and life science businesses,
1:03.0	creating meaningful connections and opening up a world of opportunity for entrepreneurs and investors alike.
1:10.0	Discover more at www.h.hbc Innovationbanking.com
1:15.1	slash EM-GB. Hello and welcome to the UKTM podcast, a weekly chat with the movers and shakers of the UK tech industry and the destination for all things UK tech related.
1:33.4	I'm your host, Jane Whitefield, and today I'm joined by Dame Dawn Childs, the CEO of Pure Data Centre Group.
1:41.0	Welcome, Dawn.
1:41.9	Thank you. So pleased to be here.
1:44.0	Now, I want to start by getting a bit of a sense of what data centres do because they're
1:50.5	coming up a lot in the news at the moment and obviously we will talk about that as well.
1:54.7	But I think it's just always good to paint a picture, isn't it, of, you know, how much data
1:59.6	we have, the role that these
2:01.4	data centres play and the specific role that your company plays in that?
2:05.8	So thank you. So I used to describe data centers as the physical manifestation of the cloud
2:12.0	or the internet, so where the internet lives. And I think that still holds true. It forms the lifeblood of everything
	...

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