Duos Technologies deploys mobile data centers, targets rural markets (Courtesy of the Jacksonville Business Journal) — In the digital age, data centers are in use everywhere.
But, with space constraints and high upkeep costs not every company has the ability to construct a multi-million-dollar facility to house those servers.
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That’s where Duos Technologies Group (NASDAQ: DUOT) is stepping in, deploying its Edge Data Centers — mobile pods where companies can skip the infrastructure component and get straight to using their data centers.
Through its subsidiary Duos Edge AI Inc., the Jacksonville-headquartered company is driving forward with its project to bring connectivity to rural communities.
“Basically we’re like a hotel for (companies),” said Duos Group President Doug Recker. “They come in and take space inside, they put their rack, and second they put their gear inside.”
Companies pay per cabinet, Recker explained, while Duos provides the rest: power, cooling, redundancy and circuits, adding that everything’s backed up.
Each pod includes a recently-patented entryway system, designed to protect CPUs and GPUs from dust and dirt, which can dramatically reduce their lifespan. The system effectively adds an airlock-like system with a two-door access configuration, according to Duos.
That also includes advanced filtration to reduce intrusion of dust, dirt and moisture, particularly useful in rural areas.
The Duos subsidiary is pursuing a goal to establish 15 modular data center pods nationwide by year-end, with a focus on underserved and high-growth markets. Most of that is concentrated in Texas while next year’s goal is 65 pods.
Deployment of individual pods comes at a cost of around $1.5 million, said Recker.
Its fifth pod was deployed Tuesday in Texas, a collaboration with the Dumas Independent School District, according to a release.
Now, Duos is marketing its data center pods to the education and health care systems in specifically tier three markets — areas with a population from 60,000 to 160,000 people, said Recker, identifying Jacksonville as a tier two.
“Hyper scalers are going out to these tier three and tier two markets,” said Recker. “They need footprints there but they don’t want to build a $50 million to $100 million data center when you can drop one of our pods out there. We can deploy in 120 days, compared to a year or two years to build.”
As companies pursue artificial intelligence more and more, Recker predicts an increasing need for that infrastructure. Locally, he sees opportunity for deployment in St. Johns and Clay counties.
“What you’ll see is branches of hospitals that don’t have the cooling and they don’t have the infrastructure right now to do this mass amount of power and cooling,” he said. “So we’ll drop a pod in their parking lot which can handle the AI infrastructure.”