In this edition of our Deep Dive series, Charles Liang, CEO of Supermicro talks about starting out in the industry, his style of management philosophy and the current hot talking point within the data centre space.
What would you describe as your most memorable achievement in the data centre industry?
One of the most recent achievements for Supermicro in the data centre industry is when we landed a contract with one of the US National Labs that is doing COVID-19 research. This system is quite large and also uses liquid cooling so that the advanced systems that we supplied can keep running without having to be concerned with overheating.
What first made you think of a career in technology/data centres?
As a child growing up in Taiwan, I was always interested in technology and how computers could be used in various industries. In addition, by growing up on a farm, as I learned more about technology, I wanted to figure out how to develop new technologies without harming the environment. As global warming and the environmental impact of computing became so apparent, I set one of the missions of this company to look at ways to reduce electricity consumption while still advancing all the great things that computers can do to help our lives. By working in high tech, we can also help to save mother earth.
What style of management philosophy do you employ with your current position?
As a trained engineer, even as the CEO, I still like to interact with the engineering teams, especially as new and innovative products are in their formative stages. I like to hire leaders for the different areas at Supermicro and trust that they will do the right thing and make the hard decisions. By delegating many of the product and business decisions to my executive staff, I can concentrate on longer term issues and where the company should be allocating resources. I enjoy working with all company levels to figure out how to create solutions to challenging problems systematically. One of the current challenges that I am dealing with is how to scale our business effectively and expand our US and APAC manufacturing and customer support.
What do you think is the current hot talking point within the data centre space?
Two things come to mind:
1. That data centres will be distributed from the Edge to the cloud. New form factors and intelligence at the Edge are becoming critical as new services move away from massive, large-scale data centres.
2. Concern about the effect on the environment of data centres. We know that data centres consume between 1% and 3% of all electricity produced and some decisions can be made to reduce this effect on the environment.
How do you deal with stress and unwind outside the office?
I like to relax with my family and explore the San Francisco Bay Area. However, with our offices in Silicon Valley, it is nice to leave all of that behind and, within a short drive, be out hiking or visiting San Francisco. By getting back to the wonderful nature all around us, this actually ties into one of our corporate missions, to reduce the impact of complex computer technology in the form of environmental impact. I’ve also volunteered to do some planting of trees in California, as time permits.
What do you currently identify as the major areas of investment in your industry?
Edge Computing, which often includes AI capability, is becoming essential for many end markets that we engage with. AI is becoming a critical technology for many industries and one type of hardware for AI may not fill all scenarios, especially with the rapid growth of Edge locations that can have demanding environmental requirements. So, we have to be on the lookout for the latest technologies and integrate optimised CPUs and hardware accelerators while ensuring that our systems are ultra-reliable and power-efficient. Also, as I referred to earlier, a reduction in the greenhouse gases attributable to data centres needs to be addressed at many levels of the IT and data centre ‘stack’.
What are the region-specific challenges you encounter in your role?
Supermicro sells systems worldwide. Our challenge at the moment is to obtain the necessary components that our customers require and to be able to manufacture the quantities of systems the businesses will need as we come out of the pandemic. In addition, a challenge is that not all regions of the world are coming out of the pandemic simultaneously, which means that demand for our products will vary by geography.
What changes to your job role have you seen in the last year and how do you see these developing in the coming months?
The chip shortage is something that was not expected just 18 months ago. We continue to work closely with our suppliers and our sales team estimates. Also, as our workers come back to our facilities in the US, we do not see the same ability to do so in our other geographies just yet.
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