In the past decade, the attraction of modular facilities has hugely accelerated, while the concept has evolved from one of simple shipping containers packed with servers to much more sophisticated prefabricated systems.

Now, this is going even further than ever before, driven by the need to keep up with the increasingly weighty demands of AI.

“We’ve reached this really interesting place where we’re seeing technology change in months rather than years,” says Valerie Crafton, chief revenue officer at US modular data centre provider Mod42. “At the same time, it’s sometimes now taking years to build traditional data centres.”

Changing thinking

In two decades of working on mission-critical infrastructure and leading programmes for companies including Microsoft, Google and Intel, Crafton has seen first-hand how substantially the market has changed.

She points to the industry increasingly going where the power is, building data centres where they have never been built before. “The number of modular use cases has never been so great as in this AI era,” says Crafton. “If we don’t start thinking differently, it’s going to leave us in the dirt because we’ll never be able to build fast enough.”

That is why Mod42, which she joined early this year, has been taking things to the next level in the modular sector.

Crafton highlights that while industry players across the globe are promoting the idea of modular data centres, there is a spectrum of what the term ‘modular’ means to different people. Some consider them as mainly small or edge facilities, or as sets of components, systems or parts of buildings assembled off-site.

However, Mod42 views them as fully operational AI factories and ʻmodular’ not as a product category comprising just containers that house equipment, but as a manufacturing methodology that cuts costs and boosts efficiency.

All in on modular builds

Mod42’s offering comprises fully operational data centres with the same structural, electrical, mechanical, cooling, fire protection and control systems found in traditional data centres.

“With such modular builds, your schedule changes completely,” says Crafton. “The permitting process and certain infrastructure work can be carried out at the same time as the data centre itself is being built off-site.”

As a result, Mod42 recently delivered a data centre from dirt to compute-ready for a customer in under 90 days – a timeframe that Crafton describes as “mind-blowing” when traditional construction schedules often stretch from 18 to 36 months.

For the firm, standard deployment time for a customer is less than seven months, but subsequent facilities can then be built in a week. Meanwhile, Mod42 estimates that its modular builds speed time to revenue by 250% and slash capex by 40% compared with traditional methods.

Efficient and sustainable

There is a bigger story here than simply building faster: modular delivery fundamentally changes how data centre capacity is planned, built and scaled.

Crafton points to the inefficiencies inherent in traditional facilities, where significant space and infrastructure can sit underused while owners wait for demand to materialise. A modular approach allows capacity to be deployed in repeatable, purpose-built increments, adding compute when and where it is needed rather than overbuilding years in advance.

Off-site manufacturing also changes the labour equation. Instead of relying solely on the availability of specialist workers at a location, work can take place in controlled environments where skilled labour is available, and quality and repeatability are easier to ensure.

At the same time, factory-based construction can reduce material waste, site disruption, rework and carbon impacts associated with prolonged construction activities.

“There’s this huge shift in mindset taking place in the industry,” says Crafton. “The more of these fully modular builds that pop up, the more people will get comfortable with the idea and the more it will be the new way of delivering facilities.”