SAN DIEGO—The new model of building data centers, which resembles the pre-fab construction of mobile homes, allows for quick assemblage in a sector where risk and uncertainty can be high, Emerson Network Power's VP of market development Jack Pouchet tells GlobeSt.com. Pouchet will be speaking at the Green Data Center conference in San Diego in February on maximizing business efficiency and IT scalability through prefabricated construction and modular deployments—basically factory-assembled data centers that follow the model of mobile homes. We spoke exclusively with Pouchet about this model and why it makes sense for data-center developers and owners to consider.

GlobeSt.com: What changes are you noticing in the development and construction of new data centers?

Pouchet: The data-center industry has been looking at best practices and applying them to construction. In applying mobile-home-industry techniques to building out a data center, they're using factory construction, which is done offsite, to build up the core pieces that become the data center. In the meantime, the land is being graded, the utilities and infrastructure are being placed, the concrete slab and foundation are being poured and inspections are being done. There are a lot of policies and practices that go into the cooling system for data centers, and that can be done in a factory environment and then tested just like mobile homes are—as complete systems. The customer can come witness this; then, the data center is taken apart and shipped and reassembled on site, which only takes a matter of days. We've compressed the time to develop. In the data-center industry, people don't always know what they need, but when they do need it, they need it in a hurry. The factory-industry technique is more efficient than the on-site technique used in most CRE construction.