The Open Compute Project (OCP) has published a new white paper, Digital Twins for Data Centers, setting out a shared industry definition of the data-centre digital twin and a maturity model for adopting one. Interact's Stephen Clement is a lead author of the paper and Co-Chair of the OCP Digital Twin Strategic Initiative, working alongside authors from NVIDIA, Cadence and Dassault Systèmes.
Why a shared definition matters
“Digital twin” has become one of the most used and least agreed terms in the data-centre industry. The paper's first job is to fix that: a clear, unified definition, agreed across the ecosystem, of a continuously synchronised virtual replica that can simulate its physical counterpart and support decisions across the whole lifecycle. From there it sets out a maturity model with defined stages, so operators can place where they are today and see the next step from wherever they already are.
Everyone talks about digital twins, and almost no two people mean the same thing by it. The point of this work is a definition the whole ecosystem can agree on, and a maturity model that lets an operator place themselves honestly and see the next step. A twin is only ever as useful as the measured data underneath it.
Stephen Clement, Lead Author and Co-Chair of the OCP Digital Twin Strategic Initiative.
Across the lifecycle
The paper works through where digital twins earn their place, stage by stage:
- Design: getting the build right first time, and stress-testing it before anything is procured.
- Sustainability and life-cycle assessment: modelling energy, carbon and resource use ahead of the decision.
- Commissioning: catching defects virtually, before physical commissioning.
- Operations: moving from monitoring to automation, predictive maintenance and real-time visibility, on a path towards lights-out operation.
It includes worked case studies, among them a digital twin that accelerates construction, physics-aware equipment selection for AI data centres, and a hardware-refresh case study powered by Interact, showing a digital twin enabling a circular refresh.
Where Interact fits
That refresh case study is no accident. It runs straight into the sustainability work we do every day, and it draws on the same measured foundation as everything else we build: a hardware digital twin, grounded in measured performance data, that lets an operator test refresh, consolidation and migration scenarios against real behaviour before committing the capital. Because it is measured, the same model quantifies the energy and carbon impact of each option ahead of the decision, which is what turns a refresh into a circular, evidenced move and gives teams the numbers they need for Scope 2 and Scope 3 reporting. Modelling the estate before you move brings efficiency and sustainability into the same evidenced decision.
We put measured evidence under data-centre decisions, so contributing to open, shared standards is a natural extension of that. A digital twin built on measured data is how a hardware refresh becomes an evidenced decision, and that only scales when the whole industry is working to the same definition.
Rich Kenny, Managing Director, Interact.
The paper is also candid about what is still missing, chiefly greater standardisation and interoperability, before the industry reaches fully autonomous operation. That open, shared groundwork is exactly what the OCP exists to do, and why it is worth contributing to.
The white paper is open access under a Creative Commons licence. Download it from our Resources page, or read more on how digital twins can transform data-centre operations.