Johnson Controls and NTT: 26 Years of Thermal Innovation

Johnson Controls and NTT have spent 26 years growing together, pioneering sustainability initiatives and scaling thermal management solutions from single-site deployments to global operations worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

The partnership's longevity speaks to what Jeffrey Jerwers, Account Executive at Johnson Controls, describes as a foundation of mutual benefit. 

"NTT has always been a great partner with JCI,” says Jeffrey. “They've valued partnerships as part of one of their key successes, and they've always given us very long-term planning of their business goals. This vision has allowed us to increase our manufacturing, improve our supply chain and scale the products and services that we provide to them."

This collaborative approach has enabled both companies to pursue what Jeffrey characterises as "responsible growth" – expansion underpinned by strategic planning rather than opportunistic scaling. The results are evident in the relationship's scope: what started with two chillers in a single facility has expanded to support NTT's international footprint.

Central to the partnership's success has been NTT's position as a sustainability pioneer. In 2016, the operator made what Anthony Seiler, Global Director for Strategy and Go-to-market at Johnson Controls, calls "a pretty bold decision to move away from water-cooled chillers and eliminate water evaporation completely." 

NTT became the first major colocation operator to deploy air-cooled chillers at scale, with JCI installing dozens of units in what proved to be an industry-defining move. "We saw that early pioneering move spread like wildfire across the industry," notes Anthony.

The sustainability pivot, which began with test cases in 2011 before full implementation in 2016, required significant innovation and partnership from both NTT and Johnson Controls. 

The company developed free cooling screw chiller technology that allowed NTT to transition away from traditional water-cooled systems while maintaining best-in-class efficiency. 

"Their environmental leadership created the perfect testing ground for next-generation cooling solutions," explains Anthony. “Efficiency and environmental stewardship aren't competing priorities any more, but they're actually complementary advantages."

Johnson Controls' value proposition extends beyond individual products to what Anthony describes as comprehensive thermal management "from chip to chiller, covering the entire thermal continuum in a data centre." 

This end-to-end capability has become increasingly critical as the industry transforms. Jeffrey recalls that when he entered the sector in 2005, a five-megawatt facility was considered massive and cooling was treated like air conditioning. Today, the scale and pace of change render these numbers and approaches obsolete, with gigawatt-scale projects now under consideration. 

Against this backdrop, Johnson Controls is intensifying its focus on efficiency optimisation. “Today, the scale of these projects is significantly larger, especially as we're starting to look at gigawatt-type campuses,” says Jeffrey. “After twenty years in the data centre industry, the one constant is it’s constantly changing.”

"We're intensifying our innovation focus on creating the most efficient thermal chain possible,” concludes Anthony. “Our goal is straightforward – drive the lowest PUE achievable, so our customers can dedicate more revenue to what matters most to them, the computing power in their racks, rather than the infrastructure supporting it.”

To read the full story in the magazine, click HERE.