How Do You Put an Elephant in the Fridge?

“How do you put an elephant in the fridge?” No, this is not a rhetorical question or a joke. Candidates who applied to work for Gemalto, a digital security company, were asked for a response to this seemingly irrelevant question during a job interview.

Still thinking about how you’d respond?

This would be my answer: Open the fridge, put the elephant in and close the fridge! Puzzled? This is the same type of mentality applied to daily customer challenges across the data center industry. The answer may not seem straight forward but with lateral thinking, deductive reasoning and smart management tools, we make things happen.

CLICK TO TWEET: Laura Chen explains how CommScope helps enterprises manage data centers effectively.

Don’t overthink it

As countries like China, Japan, South Korea and the United States test 5G, they are expanding investments in next-generation networks. This includes designing data centers to meet the requirements of the Internet of Things (IoT), virtual/augmented reality (VR/AR), blockchain, and artificial intelligence (AI), among other emerging applications.

During this quest for digital transformation, many companies have posed similar questions to the elephant one. For example, "How do we extend the life of an aging data center which is capable of processing information nearly as fast as receiving it, at 400G speeds?"

This may seem like a daunting task but it’s a no brainer. Partner with a technology provider who has customer experience, gets service delivery and is open to new investment models.

Helping the enterprise to manage data centers effectively

I’m lucky to be surrounded by technology companies in China who are eager to build world-class energy efficient facilities. For example, Tencent is recycling cold air, using renewables and may access the large local supply of hydropower.

Did you know that with the right cabling system, data centers are more efficient in managing energy needs? Join us at DCD Shanghai on June 25 to continue the conversation. And don’t worry, we won’t ask you to take the complete animal IQ test.