With data, technology devices and Internet-of-Things exploding at record paces, what does the future of data centers look like 25 years from now? The current pace of investment in cloud data centers seems unsustainable. While the cost per byte is plummeting to near zero, the sheer numbers result in a bulky infrastructure that requires billions of dollars, and thousands of workers just to build a single cloud data center campus, with the major cloud providers constructing a dozen or more such campuses each around the globe just to keep pace.

While the drive to make infrastructure more efficient over the last 5 years has changed the conversation with respect to data center design and made designers and owners more interested in "green" initiatives, there is a theoretical limit to what can be achieved solely through infrastructure savings.