Forecasting AI Demand at Microsoft | Sajay Suresh | Data Science Hangout

To join future data science hangouts, add it to your calendar here: https://pos.it/dsh - All are welcome! We'd love to see you! We were recently joined by Sajay Suresh, Senior Director of Data and Applied Science at Microsoft, to chat about data center supply chain planning, forecasting AI demand, and navigating data science careers. In this Hangout, we explored how the emergence of technologies like LLMs changed projections for data center demand. Sajay discussed how forecasting for something with little historical data, like AI demand, required drawing analogies from the past, such as comparing the training/inferencing model to the iPhone and its App Store. A major complexity in current supply chain planning is the lack of fungibility with modern GPUs requiring specific infrastructure like liquid cooling, meaning data centers designed for GPUs cannot easily be repurposed for traditional compute/storage workloads, increasing investment risk if demand is lower than planned. Resources mentioned in the video and zoom chat: 🔗 LLM Workflow Demo with Joe Cheng → https://pages.posit.co/05-28WorkflowDemo.html 🔗 Posit::conf 2025 Virtual Registration → https://posit.co/blog/posit-conf-2025-virtual-experience-registration/ 🔗 Sajay Suresh on LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/sajay-suresh-12687631/ 🔗 Find mentors on ADPList → https://adplist.org/ 🔗 Officeverse R packages for Office documents → https://ardata-fr.github.io/officeverse/ 🔗 Microsoft team meetup video on capacity planning → https://www.youtube.com/live/07j22d4B_hA?feature=shared 🔗 Seattle Data And AI Security community → https://www.linkedin.com/posts/seattle-data-and-ai-security_microsoft-fabric-tour-seattle-data-ai-security-6891902675280633856-xLw3?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop 🔗 Quarto Gallery → https://quarto.org/docs/gallery/ 🔗 Quarto Guide → https://quarto.org/docs/guide/ If you didn’t join live, one great discussion you missed from the zoom chat was about communities and meetups recommended for networking and learning in data science. Participants shared various groups like R-Ladies, Data Book Club, local tech meetups, and specific conference recommendations like Shiny Conf and DataConf.ai NYC. What's your favorite data community? ► Subscribe to Our Channel Here: https://bit.ly/2TzgcOu Follow Us Here: Website: https://www.posit.co Hangout: https://pos.it/dsh LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/posit-software Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/posit.co Thanks for hanging out with us! 💛