AI Data Centers Have a Communications Protocol Problem

I remember when data centers used to be quiet rooms full of servers that required relatively low power. Now, they’re power plants with a server problem.

The AI buildout is pushing rack densities past 100 kilowatts. Liquid cooling, which, for forty years, was only for supercomputers, is now part of the facilities’ industrial gear and sharing the building with an SQL Server.

What does that mean? It means that data centers are now the most protocol-fragmented commercial facilities on the planet. These sites now need six or seven different communication protocols and that often comes as a nasty surprise to the system integrator.

That fragmentation is hidden behind every “single pane of glass” presentation a vendor has ever made.

The Communications Protocol Seam Is Where Integration Goes To Die

A data center has two halves that grew up apart like two sisters-in-law:

• The IT half speaks SNMP, REST and JSON, and it answers to a CIO.
• The facility half speaks BACnet for HVAC and Modbus for power meters and chillers, with EtherNet/IP and PROFINET showing up on packaged cooling skids and power equipment. The facility half answers to a facilities director.

The two halves rarely use the same words for the same thing.

Bringing them together is not a software problem. It is more than a protocol translation problem. It’s a normalization and scaling problem, a data naming problem and a data modeling problem. Not that much different than the problem with the control system in the old factory down the street.

Why Software Protocol Gateways Are the Wrong Answer

A software protocol gateway is a Windows or Linux server running some translation application. The marketing pitch sounds great. The reality is a recurring bill, a list of open IT tickets and a large attack surface that is red meat to cyber attackers.

Software protocol gateways carry costs that nobody puts in the presentation:

• A subscription that compounds (forever). Most of these are sold as annual licenses tied to point counts. A hardware protocol gateway is bought once.
• A server. Somebody must provision it, patch it, monitor it, back it up and own it forever. The integrator might install it and they will be very happy to have a monthly support contract to maintain it.
• Your IT person. Nothing against IT people. They are busy and just don’t have the same urgency that plant people (facilities in this case) do. It’s difficult to deploy a software protocol gateway without IT getting involved and getting on their schedule takes effort.
• An attack surface. Every Windows or Linux box on the OT network is a door, and most of those doors have not been hardened to IEC 62443.

A purpose-built hardware, protocol gateway like any one of the RTA 460 series, eliminates the recurring bill, the server and the IT ticket. It is configured from a browser. It does one job. It has been doing it for years without anyone touching it. And now, it’s secured to the IEC 62443 standard.

European Protocol Gateway Vendors Aren’t the Answer

European protocol gateway vendors built their reputation on factory automation in Germany, Sweden and France. They are exceptionally competent. They are also expensive, slow to ship and treat the US data center buyer as a secondary market. When a Colorado operator needs forty protocol gateways for a Phoenix build by the end of the quarter, the right answer is not a six-week lead time from across the Atlantic.

RTA protocol gateways are built in the US, kept in stock and backed by a five-year warranty. The supply chain is short. The price is fixed. The product ships at 2:30pm. Every day!

IEC 62443 is the 2026 baseline

A data center is critical infrastructure. The insurance underwriters figured this out in 2025. The auditors figured it out in 2026. Any protocol gateway sitting between the OT network and the BMS or DCIM is now in scope for IEC 62443, the cybersecurity standard for industrial automation systems.

A software protocol gateway running on a general-purpose OS does not meet IEC 62443 out of the box. It can be brought into compliance, but only with hardening, patching and ongoing audit work that nobody budgeted. A purpose-built protocol gateway with a locked-down firmware image and a defined attack surface is a much shorter conversation with the auditor.

Looking Ahead

The protocol problem is not going away. The data center industry is going to spend the next decade dealing with it and RTA will be right there to help.

Contact the RTA Enginerds today to architect the right solution for your data center. Call 1-800-249-1612 now to get started.