For those of you who haven't seen a data center, imagine a very large room with rows and rows of big cabinets full of servers or storage devices or network devices.

Over time, those devices are consuming more and more energy.

There was a report that was put out two years ago, predicting that by 2025, the data center market would consume more energy

than India as a subcontinent does. Some very innovative thinkers got together, looked

to the marketplace. They anticipated where it was going. They literally ripped up the rulebooks

and started again. For Wilson Shanks, I'm the rulebooks and started again.

For Lawson Shanks, I'm the Chief Innovation and Technology Officer Erlind.

This is Code Story, the podcast bringing you interviews with tech visionaries who share in the critical moments of what it takes to change in industry and build and lead.

A team that has your back.

I'm your host, Noah Laphart, and today how Phil Lawson-Chanks joined a line to build forward-thinking solutions for the next wave of data centers.

All this and more on Code Story.

Phil Lawson-Shanks has had a convoluted path into tech. In the past, he worked for a company that

owned and operated airports in Europe. He got involved in the very early days of servers,

so early that this was back when they were just PCs under someone's desk. This took him down

the path of migrating mainframes to more cost-effective productivity machines. He worked for Compact

at one point, which brought him to the States. Personally, he enjoys risk-taking. He rides a

DuCati motorbike way too fast, enjoys adventure sports, jumping out of planes, and rock climbing.

In 2013, the founders of Phil's current company saw the way the data center industry was going.

They saw that the energy consumption around data centers was going to be astronomical.

And they started building some incredibly innovative things in this area and got Phil's attention.

Three years ago, he joined the team.

This is the creation story of Aligned.

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