Toshiba realises it can build, power, and maintain datacenters – so builds a team to do it all

Show us another company that builds power plants, semiconductors, and hard disks

Japanese industrial giant Toshiba has created an internal organization to make itself more attractive to datacenter builders and operators.

The 95,000-employee company’s business units possess expertise in building power generation plants, providing lighting and cooling systems, and treating wastewater. Toshiba also makes hard disk drives, batteries, semiconductors, and industrial computers. The company also builds and installs elevators and lifts.

And it operates around the world.

The company knows datacenter operators need many of the things it does, but currently struggles to engage with datacenter builders and operators.

Execs want the new internal organization – named the Data Center Business Promotion Department – to change that by co-ordinating different business units. The company thinks doing so will help by finding talent across Toshiba, a useful trick at a time engineering talent is scarce.

The company is also investigating what it’s described as “a new end-to-end service for modular and unit data centers that extends from design and manufacture to construction and maintenance.” An anything-as-a-service offering “centered on data linkage between datacenters” is also on its agenda, as a way to add further value to bit barns.

To bring its ideas to the world, Toshiba has created a “Data Center Infrastructure Promotion Office” that will open for business on July 1st.

Toshiba’s already started hiring to make this all happen.

"The data centre construction ecosystem has many participating industries and companies," Gartner director analyst Takuma Yamamoto told The Register. "Toshiba's initiative could contribute to the efficiency of data centre construction, as many of the technologies, products, and services required for data centre construction will be provided by a single vendor."

"On the other hand, data centre construction is a mature industry, so Toshiba will also need the flexibility to continue selling those products and services separately," he added.

Craig Scroggie, CEO and Managing Director of Australian datacenter operator NEXTDC, welcomed the news in the context of the datacenter boom.

“We are entering the Fourth Industrial Revolution — and datacenters sit at its core,” he told The Register. “This is the most significant wave of infrastructure development in modern history.”

“We are now in a global AI arms race — not just between companies, but nations," he added, before pointing out that the ability to deploy sovereign AI systems "is fast becoming a foundation for national security, economic competitiveness, and technological leadership.”

“Companies and capital providers globally are moving decisively to position themselves at the forefront of this extraordinary transformation.” ®