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Data Center Innovation Challenge

2023 Innovation Challenge Winners Announced!

2023 Winners

Most Disruptive Technology 

ECL, a data center solution company in the United States that is fully sustainable with zero impact on the environment.

Best Chance for Market Success

ECL, a data center solution company in the United States that is fully sustainable with zero impact on the environment.

Best Ability to Gain Additional Capital

Neu.ro, provides management and automation of the infrastructure and processes for successful ML development at scale.

Most Influential Founding Team 

Ventana Micro Systems, revolutionizes the processor market by offering high-performance, extensible and secure compute chiplets based on RISC-V's open architecture.

 

We thank all Innovation Challenge participants for their great presentations and effort. Additional finalists included:

  • Net-Zero Edge (NZE), driving innovation in the data center industry by harnessing the power of the ocean to create sustainable, scalable, and secure solutions for a data-driven world.
  • DHK Storage, Inc., dba ChiliRack, precision air cooling for data centers, provides vastly superior server cooling and big cooling cost savings, delivering cold air directly into the rack. 

The finalists presented a ten minute “elevator pitch” on the Data Center Live Stage and answered questions from the judges.

The Data Center Innovation Challenge was judged by a panel of industry thought leaders representing the market research firm Omdia, the investment community, and a former Innovation Challenge winner. The judges included: 

  • Moises Levy, Senior Principal Analyst, Omdia
  • Mark Litke, Chief Commercial Officer with Cumulus Digital Systems,
  • Don Anderson, Senior Managing Director, The Blackstone Group

Innovation Challenge: Pitch the Data Center Community

Data Center World's Innovation Challenge is the #1 opportunity for data center organizations to pitch to the data center community. The competition offers unmatched exposure and access to valuable networking and mentorship that will help gain publicity and scale your business.

Companies selected to participate have been developing or selling a technology solution that directly impacts the data center or data center professionals and are judged by a panel of experts based on several business model and go-to-market criteria (outlined below). Winners are chosen by the panel based on their presentations on stage and their demonstration of a  clear technology solution, a concise pitch, and the value of technology to the data center industry.

2023 Data Center Innovation Challenge is now closed for submissions. 

Qualifications (must meet three of the four)

  • Revenue: $5 million or less
  • Number of Employees: 50 or fewer
  • Funding Status: Series A or before
  • Age of Company: 5 years or less

Judging Categories

  • Most Disruptive Technology – The award for the technology judged to have the best opportunity to create short-term positive market, sales, or customer service disruption among existing data center technologies in its vertical
  • Best Chance for Market Success – The award for the technology that judges determine will be the most successful at creating revenue upside and profit for the company
  • Best Ability to Gain Additional Capital – The award for the company believes to be  sufficiently structured, has the most attractive data center technology, and has the most connected and well-run management team to be able to raise additional capital to grow the company
  • Most Influential Founding Team – The company that judged to have assembled the most experienced founding backers, founding management team, and strongest investment profile

Judging Criteria

The following criteria will be used by our panel of judges (experts from the analyst, editorial, and investment communities). Contestants should be prepared to address each of the five main criteria below with a concise and informative presentation that will be judiciously timed to 10 minutes per company.

Business Model

  • How does the team plan on making this a successful business? Have they done due diligence on competition?
  • Is the business model scalable, either globally or regionally?
  • How will the company acquire customers?
  • What is the company’s revenue model?

Customer Validation

  • Is the company building something that people actually want?
  • How well does the company understand their customer and their customer’s needs?
  • Did the company get out and talk to customers? What is the value proposition to customers?
  • What is the company’s capacity to recognize and describe the problem to be solved?
  • Does the company know the cost of acquiring a customer and their lifetime value?

Go to Market

  • What’s the plan for building a sales team and a sales ecosystem?
  • Is there a plan to open source the product?
  • How do you plan to use partners/analysts/PR?

Execution & Design

  • Does the technology or service deliver a compelling and valuable user experience?
  • How much capacity to disrupt the market?
  • Is there a sustainable competitive advantage, or can it be copied?
  • What’s the lead on the competition?
  • If applicable, are they able to demo a product, and if so, was it functional?

The Team

  • Is the founding team multidisciplinary and complementary with the capacity to implement their stated goals?
  • Are the team’s goals ambitious enough? Or too ambitious?
  • Is the team capable of selling the “vision”?

2022 Winners

Most Disruptive Technology 

GRAID Technology, the world's first NVMe RAID to eliminate the traditional RAID bottleneck and unlock the full potential of enterprise SSD performance.

Best Chance for Market Success 
Alcatraz AI, provides an autonomous access control experience by leveraging the unique power of the human face.

Best Ability to Gain Additional Capital 
GRAID Technology, the world's first NVMe RAID to eliminate the traditional RAID bottleneck and unlock the full potential of enterprise SSD performance.

Most Influential Founding Team 
Cumulus Digital Systems, Inc.,digitalizing mission-critical manual work in maintenance and construction. 

We thank all Innovation Challenge participants for their great presentations and effort. Additional finalists included:

  • Round World Business Group, supports HotSite®, an array of specialized aluminum gantry cranes and beams that can protect IT equipment. 
  • IQS, supports Quick Rack, a patented device that assists with installing hardware within a server/network rack. 

The finalists presented a ten minute “elevator pitch” on the Data Center Live Stage and answered questions from the judges.

The Data Center Innovation Challenge will be judged by a panel of industry thought leaders representing the market research firm Omdia, the investment community, and a former Innovation Challenge winner. The judges include: 

  • Andrea Munoz, Senior Vice President, Operations & Customer Success, CyrusOne
  • Moises Levy, PhD, Principal Analyst, Data Center Physical Infrastructure, Omdia
  • Michael Maniscalco, EVP of Technology, Applied Blockchain Inc.