Strategic Advisory Council
Christian Belady
Strategic Foresight Advisor and Board Member Former Vice President & Distinguished Engineer of Datacenter R&D at Microsoft
Christian Belady is a seasoned veteran in managing data center/infrastructure development at global scale. Currently, he is a strategic foresight advisor and Board member for several companies across the globe. Christian retired from Microsoft in 2023, where he had played a pivotal role in developing one of the largest data center footprints in the world. In his last role at Microsoft, he was Vice President and Distinguished Engineer of Datacenter R&D, focusing on transformational technologies to address challenges with scaling the cloud and AI. Prior to 2018, Christian led Microsoft’s server and data center development globally including research, engineering, construction, and operations for Microsoft’s data center portfolio. He also incubated and led the energy team during this period.
Christian is considered the “Father of PUE”, the global data center efficiency metric. He was a founding member of ASHRAE's TC9.9 to drive industry guidelines and was one of the early architects of the Green Grid where he co-authored Water Utilization Effectiveness (WUE) and Carbon Usage Effectiveness (CUE). Christian also has over 160 Patents issued related to both data center and server design.
As a result of his contributions, Christian has received several industry awards: 2010 Search Data named Christian as one of “5 People who changed the data center” industry; 2013 Data Center Dynamics “Outstanding Contribution to the Industry” Award; 2017 DataCloud "Data Center Thought Leadership" Award; 2015 Semi-Therm "Thermi" Award; iMasons "2020 Industry Luminary" Award; 2023 Interglobix Magazine's "The Titans List"; 2024 Member of National Academy of Engineering; 2024 Northern Virginia Technology Council “Data center Icon” Award.
Christian was a key player in development of the iMasons' Climate Accord (ICA). This historic event was conceived at Christian home (coined Chez Belady) on 2/22/2022 with 40+ Industry executives.
