Episode 208 of the Data Center Go-to-Market Podcast features an interview with Yong Tan, Global Vice President of AI Infrastructure Business Development and Sales at AIRSYS USA.
- Explain why rising GPU rack densities are making cooling and power planning essential earlier in data center design.
- Compare how retrofit projects and new builds shape infrastructure planning and customer conversations.
- Identify the different priorities of engineering, procurement, sourcing, and finance stakeholders.
- Connect buyer education, workshops, and practical content to earlier customer engagement.
- Build a focused go-to-market playbook that prioritizes target accounts and partner channels.
- Align customer teams by bringing stakeholders together around shared project requirements.
- Evaluate how Power Computing Effectiveness (PCE) can help assess the productive use of power.
- Integrate cooling, power, computing, and service into a broader customer solution.
- Recognize why technical expertise and customer focus matter in modern data center sales.
Host:
Joshua Feinberg, CEO
DCSMI
Special Guest:
Yong Tan, Global Vice President of AI Infrastructure Business Development and Sales
AIRSYS USA
Overview
As AI workloads push server racks toward unprecedented power densities, data center operators face a growing challenge: cooling, power, and computing can no longer be planned in isolation. In this episode of the Data Center Go-to-Market Podcast, host Joshua Feinberg talks with Yong Tan about how the industry can prepare for higher-density infrastructure and evolving cooling demands.
Tan shares why vendors should engage customers early, educate buyers, and understand the priorities of engineering, procurement, and finance teams. Their conversation also covers liquid cooling, integrated infrastructure solutions, and how metrics such as Power Computing Effectiveness can help organizations make better use of available power.
Integrated Solutions
- Higher-density AI workloads are bringing cooling into early infrastructure planning. Yong emphasized integrated cooling and power solutions, including air and liquid cooling, chillers, CDUs, and modular infrastructure.
- Rack power may rise from roughly 150–200 kW toward 600 kW and eventually 1 MW; 800 V DC and two-phase cooling were discussed as emerging developments.
Buyer Engagement
- Effective sales requires technical fluency, early engineering engagement, and understanding procurement priorities, budgets, and decision processes.
- Buyer education, targeted customer selection, and OEM partnerships can help smaller teams focus resources and build trust before formal purchasing.
- Sales teams should connect stakeholders across engineering, IT, finance, and procurement and demonstrate implementation, support, and lifecycle value.
Outline
AI Infrastructure and Cooling
- AIRSYS provides air- and liquid-cooling solutions and is expanding its focus on integrated AI infrastructure.
- Increasing rack density makes cooling a core part of early facility design and deployment planning.
- Yong anticipates continued development in higher-capacity cooling, power integration, 800 V DC, and eventually two-phase cooling.
Technical Go-to-Market
- Technical sales leaders need to understand customer architectures, power and space constraints, and the AI infrastructure ecosystem.
- Engineering teams typically evaluate technology fit and performance; procurement and sourcing assess manufacturer capability, service, and global support.
- Customer relationships should be built around long-term implementation, maintenance, and support—not just a product purchase.
Buyer Education and Account Focus
- Practical workshops, seminars, and useful planning content can engage buyers before they issue an RFP.
- Smaller teams should prioritize target accounts and use OEM partner channels rather than spreading resources broadly across conferences and prospects.
- Sales teams can help customers align engineering, IT, finance, and procurement stakeholders with different priorities.
Trust and Commercial Value
- Buyers need confidence that a supplier can deliver, implement, and support a solution over its lifecycle.
- Yong favors showing financial and operational value to decision-makers, including capital costs, energy efficiency, and capacity utilization.
- AIRSYS published an OCP white paper on PCE, a metric intended to complement PUE for evaluating power use in AI data centers.
Team and Operating Model
- AIRSYS intends to retain engineering, product development, and technical customer support in-house to protect its expertise and service commitments.
- Yong seeks commercially oriented candidates with broad ecosystem knowledge and a customer-focused, consultative approach.
- A repeatable playbook remains an ongoing development area; Yong described work to reduce dependence on one-to-one relationships.
Guest Resources
- Connect with Yong Tan, Global Vice President of AI Infrastructure Business Development and Sales at AIRSYS USA, on LinkedIn
- Follow AIRSYS USA on LinkedIn
- Learn About AIRSYS USA
- Ep. 162 Yong Tan, Global Director of Sales (US and Global Accounts) - AI Systems for Data Centers at Supermicro | Data Center Go-to-Market Podcast
- Ep. 182 Yong Tan, Global Director, AI Data Center Business Development & Sales at Supermicro | Data Center Go-to-Market Podcast
Resources
- Connect with Joshua Feinberg, CEO at DCSMI, on LinkedIn
- Follow DCSMI on LinkedIn
- Follow the Data Center Go-to-Market Podcast on LinkedIn
- Learn About DCSMI
- Subscribe to the Data Center GTM Briefing
Do you want to stay up to date about upcoming episodes?
Subscribe to the Data Center GTM Briefing
