Great Business Minds

Welcome to another episode of the Great Business Minds podcast, the definitive show for the business of digital infrastructure. GBM is brought to you by Preiskel & Co, a leading award-winning City of London law firm, internationally recognised for its expertise in the digital infrastructure industry and the telecoms and tech sector work more broadly. Wherever your legal or regulatory needs are (including outer space) Preiskel & Co LLP can support you, so do feel free to reach out to them at www.preiskel.com. On this week’s episode, we’re joined by a global data centre senior executive with over 20 years of experience in real estate, corporate finance, and operations. Kok Chye Ong joined real estate private equity fund management firm Gaw Capital in 2021 as Managing Director – Head of IDC Platform, Asia (Ex-China). He spearheads Internet Data Centre (IDC) platform investments for Gaw Capital Partners outside of the China region. Prior to joining Gaw Capital Partners, Kok Chye worked in the Keppel Group of companies for 10 years in a number of roles including being a Senior Vice President and since 2014, as the Head of Strategy and Global Investments at Keppel Data Centres, a regional data centre owner and operator with over 25 data centres spread across the APAC and European regions. He has international experience in data centres, telecom and submarine cable development projects. He has strong track record in fundraising, growing data centre businesses in key markets in Asia and Europe, and leading investment teams to acquire data centres in Australia, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Germany and in the Netherlands. Kok Chye received his Bachelor of Accounting degree from the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and graduated from the Sloan Fellows Program at Stanford University with a Master of Science in Management from the Graduate School of Business in 2007. He is a Chartered Accountant (CA) in Singapore and Fellow of CPA Australia (FCPA) and a member of the Institute of Singapore Chartered Accounts (ISCA) and CPA Australia. Here at the GBM podcast, we hope you enjoy this episode and do leave us a review and share it with your contacts. We invite you back again for the next episode with another big name in the digital infrastructure space. If you want to get more from the definitive podcast for the business of digital infrastructure, make sure you subscribe to Great Business Minds. See you soon! /////////////////////// This episode features our commercial partner Preiskel & Co, a leading award-winning City of London law firm, internationally recognised for its expertise in the digital infrastructure industry as well as the telecoms and tech sector work more broadly. Visit www.preiskel.com for more information. /////////////////////// Get more from the GBM Podcast on: Official Website LinkedIn Facebook Instagram Twitter YouTube

Welcome to another episode of the Great Business Minds podcast, the definitive show for the business of digital infrastructure. GBM is brought to you by Preiskel & Co, a leading award-winning City of London law firm, internationally recognised for its expertise in the digital infrastructure industry and the telecoms and tech sector work more broadly. Wherever your legal or regulatory needs are (including outer space) Preiskel & Co LLP can support you, so do feel free to reach out to them at www.preiskel.com. This week, we are joined by an entrepreneurial and competitive international leader focused on energetically growing business and building diverse high-performing teams. Mark Smith co-founded and serves as the Executive Chairman for Qarbon Technologies since June 2022. Prior to this, he served as the Managing Director - Asia Pacific for Digital Realty from 2018 to 2022. And before that he held the position of Managing Director - Asia at Zettagrid. Before these roles, Mark was the Managing Director - Cloud Services - Asia Pacific at VMware and he also held the position of Managing Director - Asia Pacific for CenturyLink (Formerly Savvis Inc.). Mark’s earlier work experience includes serving as the President & Senior Company Officer - Japan at Thomson Reuters from 2007 to 2010, and as the Head of Sales - Asia Pacific from 2002 to 2007. He was the Global Head of Sales at eBridge from early 1999 to 2002. Prior to these roles, Mark held the position of General Manager at Bridge Information Systems and served as the Head of Sales - Asia at SunGard from 1995 to 1997, and as a Major Account Manager at Knight Ridder Financial from 1991 to 1995. He attended the University of Puget Sound, where he obtained a Bachelor's Degree. In 1987, he also briefly studied Mandarin at Tunghai University. Additionally, in 1988 to 1989, Mark Smith studied Mandarin at Beijing Normal University. He joins us now from Tokyo where he lives with his family. Here at the GBM podcast, we hope you enjoy this episode and do leave us a review and share it with your contacts. We invite you back again for the next episode with another big name in the digital infrastructure space. If you want to get more from the definitive podcast for the business of digital infrastructure, make sure you subscribe to Great Business Minds. See you soon!   /////////////////////// This episode features our commercial partner Preiskel & Co, a leading award-winning City of London law firm, internationally recognised for its expertise in the digital infrastructure industry as well as the telecoms and tech sector work more broadly. Visit www.preiskel.com for more information. ///////////////////////   Get more from the GBM Podcast on: Official Website LinkedIn Facebook Instagram Twitter YouTube

Welcome to another episode of the Great Business Minds podcast, the definitive show for the business of digital infrastructure.   GBM is brought to you by Preiskel & Co, a leading award-winning City of London law firm, internationally recognised for its expertise in the digital infrastructure industry and the telecoms and tech sector work more broadly. Wherever your legal or regulatory needs are (including outer space) Preiskel & Co LLP can support you, so do feel free to reach out to them at www.preiskel.com   In this episode, we are joined by someone whose focus will change data centre construction and how mega projects are built.   A Fellow of Keble College, Dr Atif Ansar is a Senior Teaching Fellow on the Master of Sciences in Major Programme Management and the Australian Major Projects Leadership Academy (AMPLA). He is the Founding Director of the Oxford Programme on the Sustainable Future of Capital-Intensive Industries, Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment.   Atif is also the Executive Chairman of Foresight Works – an Oxford based technology firm building next-gen software for the world’s megaprojects.   He has been at the University of Oxford since 2006 and until 2010, he undertook his DPhil (PhD), at Brasenose College, with the prestigious Clarendon Scholarship from Oxford University Press.   Atif was a post-doctoral research fellow at the BT Centre for Major Programme Management at Saïd Business School from 2010.   From 2015 until 2020, Atif was Programme Director of the MSc in Major Programme Management and continues to be one of the senior teaching fellows on the course’s faculty.   Atif also teaches on the UK and Australian Governments Major Projects Leadership Academy.   In 2018, Atif began an appointment as a visiting scholar at Stanford University’s Global Projects Center and a Visiting Professorship at Tsinghua University.   He previously undertook his bachelor’s degree at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, where he majored in philosophy, politics, and economics.   Here at the GBM podcast, we hope you enjoy this episode and do leave us a review and share it with your contacts. We invite you back again for the next episode with another big name in the digital infrastructure space. If you want to get more from the definitive podcast for the business of digital infrastructure, make sure you subscribe to Great Business Minds. See you soon!   ///////////////////////   This episode features our commercial partner Preiskel & Co, a leading award-winning City of London law firm, internationally recognised for its expertise in the digital infrastructure industry as well as the telecoms and tech sector work more broadly. Visit www.preiskel.com for more information.   ///////////////////////   Get more from the GBM Podcast on: Official Website LinkedIn Facebook Instagram Twitter YouTube  

Welcome to another episode of the Great Business Minds podcast, the definitive show for the business of digital infrastructure. GBM is brought to you by Preiskel & Co, a leading award-winning City of London law firm, internationally recognised for its expertise in the digital infrastructure industry and the telecoms and tech sector work more broadly. Wherever your legal or regulatory needs are (including outer space) Preiskel & Co LLP can support you, so do feel free to reach out to them here. Our guest this week has had an inspiring growth journey over the years with key leadership lessons along the way. Sam Prudhomme is the president of Accelevation’s data centre business unit. Prior to joining Accelevation, Sam was the president of Instor solutions and was responsible for the overall strategy and execution for the company. Sam is a dynamic leader with a reputation of assembling and directing sales and operations teams, increasing profitability, creating customer-centric go-to-market strategies, cultivating cohesive workforces, and growing global brands. He started his career in commercial construction and moved to the telecom industry where he held a field operations role during the 4G evolution. He then transitioned to the data centre industry in 2010 where he held senior sales roles designing and implementing data centre power systems and supporting critical facility infrastructure. After more than half a decade designing, selling and constructing critical facility infrastructure he joined the Subzero Engineering, where he would become the VP of sales and marketing. He helped build Subzero’s global sales team and launched multiple product families to help the brand respond to the massive demand increase and evolving use of data centre containment. During his tenure Sam curated Subzero’s initiative to correlate the use of its products to the industry’s drive towards carbon-neutral operations. A concept now considered common place.   Here at the GBM podcast, we hope you enjoy this episode and do leave us a review and share it with your contacts. We invite you back again for the next episode with another big name in the digital infrastructure space. If you want to get more from the definitive podcast for the business of digital infrastructure, make sure you subscribe to Great Business Minds. See you soon! /////////////////////// This episode features our commercial partner Preiskel & Co, a leading award-winning City of London law firm, internationally recognised for its expertise in the digital infrastructure industry as well as the telecoms and tech sector work more broadly. Visit www.preiskel.com for more information. /////////////////////// Get more from the GBM Podcast on: Official Website LinkedIn Facebook Instagram Twitter YouTube  

Welcome to another episode of the Great Business Minds podcast, the definitive show for the business of digital infrastructure. GBM is brought to you by Preiskel & Co, a leading award-winning City of London law firm, internationally recognised for its expertise in the digital infrastructure industry as well as the telecoms and tech sector work more broadly. Wherever your legal or regulatory needs are (including outer space) Preiskel & Co LLP can support you, so do feel free to reach out to them here. This week we are joined by one of the first people taking artificial intelligence into the boardroom of a multi-billion-dollar Asian giant.   Nguyen Xuan Phong is FPT Software’s Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer and an influential leader with vast managerial and technical experience.   From 2013 to 2021, Phong served as an AI researcher at Hitachi Central Research Laboratory, where he obtained 8 patents and was named among Top 50 young inventors.   He has also spent two years as Director of Data Science and AI Division at Tokyo Techies, two years as Hitachi’s representative, and four years as Visiting Researcher at the world’s largest AI research institute Mila (in Canada).   In 2018, Phong returned to Vietnam following the government’s Innovation Network program where He played an important role in the strategic partnership between FPT and Mila, with an aspiration to build a major AI hub in Vietnam.   Phong holds a Ph.D. from the University of Tokyo and a Master's degree from Carnegie Mellon University, two top-tier universities in the US and Japan. Here at the GBM podcast, we hope you enjoy this episode and do leave us a review and share it with your contacts. We invite you back again for the next episode with another big name in the digital infrastructure space. If you want to get more from the definitive podcast for the business of digital infrastructure, make sure you subscribe to Great Business Minds. See you soon! /////////////////////// This episode features our commercial partner Preiskel & Co, a leading award-winning City of London law firm, internationally recognised for its expertise in the digital infrastructure industry as well as the telecoms and tech sector work more broadly. Visit www.preiskel.com for more information. /////////////////////// Get more from the GBM Podcast on: Official Website LinkedIn Facebook Instagram Twitter YouTube

Welcome to another episode of the Great Business Minds podcast, the definitive show for the business of digital infrastructure.   GBM is brought to you by Preiskel & Co, a leading award-winning City of London law firm, internationally recognised for its expertise in the digital infrastructure industry as well as the telecoms and tech sector work more broadly. Wherever your legal or regulatory needs are (including outer space) Preiskel & Co LLP can support you, so do feel free to reach out to them here. In this episode, we chat to an accomplished founder within the digital infrastructure landscape.   Philbert Shih is the Founder and Managing Director of Structure Research, an independent Toronto and Singapore-based research and consulting firm devoted to the cloud and data centre infrastructure services markets with a specialization in the hyperscale value chain.   He has covered the infrastructure services space for over 20 years. He is also the conference chair for the annual infra / STRUCTURE summit and heads up the Structure Research consulting practice, which has advised and provided subject matter expertise for transactions across data centre, cloud and managed hosting, with over $3 billion US dollars in value.   Prior to founding Structure Research, Philbert was the first hosting infrastructure analyst hired after Tier1 Research was sold to The 451 Group (2005) and spent six years as Senior Analyst for managed hosting and cloud.   Prior to joining Tier1 Research, he spent more than four years covering the web hosting industry – three of them as Senior Staff Writer for The Web Host Industry Review’s online and print publications.   Philbert holds an MA in Political Science from the University of British Columbia with a specialization in political economic development, and he joins GBM now from Canada’s largest city, Toronto.   Here at the GBM podcast, we hope you enjoy this episode and do leave us a review and share it with your contacts. We invite you back again for the next episode with another big name in the digital infrastructure space.   If you want to get more from the definitive podcast for the business of digital infrastructure, make sure you subscribe to Great Business Minds.   See you soon!   ///////////////////////   This episode features our commercial partner Preiskel & Co, a leading award-winning City of London law firm, internationally recognised for its expertise in the digital infrastructure industry as well as the telecoms and tech sector work more broadly. Visit www.preiskel.com for more information.   ///////////////////////   Get more from the GBM Podcast on:   Official Website   LinkedIn   Facebook   Instagram   Twitter   YouTube

Welcome to another episode of the Great Business Minds podcast, the definitive show for the business of digital infrastructure. GBM is brought to you by Preiskel & Co, a leading award-winning City of London law firm, internationally recognised for its expertise in the digital infrastructure industry as well as the telecoms and tech sector work more broadly. Wherever your legal or regulatory needs are (including outer space) Preiskel & Co LLP can support you, so do feel free to reach out to them here. In this episode we speak with Rachel Turner, a transformative leadership advisor and coach with over twenty years of experience as a founder whisperer. Rachel is the co-founder of VC Talent Lab and coaches founders of VC-backed businesses, from blitzscaling tech companies to global consumer brands and professional services organizations. In this episode, Rachel talks about her life journey, the experiences and people who have influenced her, and what motivates her in life. She also shares her thought process for generating new ideas and what she considers non-negotiable in business. Rachel also sheds light on the characteristics and skills VC investors should look for in promising founders and business leaders. She explains why founder leadership skills are crucial to the long-term success of any business and shares specific challenges and struggles founders may face in the digital infrastructure industry, along with tips on how to survive the founder 'marathon' in the digital infrastructure sector. Here at the GBM podcast, we hope you enjoy this episode and do leave us a review and share it with your contacts. We invite you back again for the next episode with another big name in the digital infrastructure space. If you want to get more from the definitive podcast for the business of digital infrastructure, make sure you subscribe to Great Business Minds. See you soon! /////////////////////// This episode features our commercial partner Preiskel & Co, a leading award-winning City of London law firm, internationally recognised for its expertise in the digital infrastructure industry as well as the telecoms and tech sector work more broadly. Visit www.preiskel.com for more information. /////////////////////// Get more from the GBM Podcast on: Official Website LinkedIn Facebook Instagram Twitter YouTube

Welcome to another episode of the Great Business Minds podcast, the definitive show for the business of digital infrastructure. At Great Business Minds we would like to welcome our new sponsor for this year. GBM is now brought to you by Preiskel & Co, a leading award-winning City of London law firm, internationally recognised for its expertise in the digital infrastructure industry as well as the telecoms and tech sector work more broadly.  Wherever your legal or regulatory needs are (including outer space) Preiskel & Co LLP can support you, so do feel free to reach out to them here. In this episode we get to talk to someone who is driving pure play investment into digital infrastructure across the board. Richard Sem is a Partner and Head of Europe at global infrastructure fund Pantheon Infrastructure where he spearheads the Global Infrastructure and Real Assets Investment Team leading its European investment activity. Founded in 1982, Pantheon has total assets under management and advice of $89 billion. Since 2009, the firm has completed more than 160 infrastructure investments alongside more than 50 asset sourcing partners. The global infrastructure investment team where our guest sits operates just south of $20 billion in assets. Richard has 25 years of experience in infrastructure private equity, corporate finance and project finance at leading institutions including InfraRed Capital Partners, HSBC, ABN AMRO, and BNP Paribas. Richard’s experience spans investing in primary, secondary, co-investments and direct investments across all infrastructure subsectors and global OECD markets. He holds a Bachelor of Science and MBA from Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, and joins us from London. Here at the GBM podcast, we hope you enjoy this episode and do leave us a review and share it with your contacts. We invite you back again for the next episode with another big name in the digital infrastructure space. If you want to get more from the definitive podcast for the business of digital infrastructure, make sure you subscribe to Great Business Minds. See you soon! /////////////////////// This episode features our commercial partner Preiskel & Co, a leading award-winning City of London law firm, internationally recognised for its expertise in the digital infrastructure industry as well as the telecoms and tech sector work more broadly. Visit www.preiskel.com for more information. /////////////////////// Get more from the GBM Podcast on: Official Website LinkedIn Facebook Instagram Twitter YouTube

Welcome to another episode of the Great Business Minds podcast, the definitive show for the business of digital infrastructure.   Great Business Minds is brought to you by Portman Partners, the premiere executive search firm for the digital infrastructure industry.  With 50+ years of experience, no other firm can match their knowledge, discretion, and connections with the best top level talent in the sector.  Are you seeking great business minds for your digital infrastructure business? Contact Portman Partners.   In this first episode of 2023, we are joined by a special guest who is an expert in design, especially business design.   Mark Wilson is CEO at Futurestate Design, formerly known as Wilson Fletcher, a London-based business innovation consultancy which has over the last 20 years gained unique insights into challenges of driving transformative change in established organisations from their work with leading companies around the world. A digital strategist with more than 30 years' experience Mark is also the author of 'Futurestate Design - how to step out of the past to create a business fit for the future', and a regular face on business changing platforms.   He has also founded Cronycle – a content intelligence platform – and authored an MSc in Digital Service Design with Brunel University.   As if that wasn’t enough, he is also an advisor to several startups giving them guidance on branding, positive transformation, and advice on market dynamics, always without forgetting the value of branding, consistency and visual language.   In this episode we discuss not only his journey through the years but also how design impacts a business and how digital infrastructure organisations can win better at the branding game, including quick actions that anyone can take today to up their branding resilience.   Here at the GBM podcast, we hope you enjoy this episode and do leave us a review and share it with your contacts. We invite you back again for the next episode with another big name in the digital infrastructure space. If you want to get more from the definitive podcast for the business of digital infrastructure, make sure you subscribe to Great Business Minds. See you soon! /////////////////////// This episode features our commercial partner Portman Partners, the leading executive search firm working exclusively in the digital infrastructure sector. Visit www.portmanpartners.com for more information. /////////////////////// Get more from the GBM Podcast on: Official Website LinkedIn Facebook Instagram Twitter YouTube

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Great Business Minds podcast, the definitive show for the business of digital infrastructure.   I’m your host Joao Marques Lima and I use my experience as a digital infrastructure journalist to dig deep into business issues but also get to know those who build our digital world.   Great Business Minds is brought to you by Portman Partners, the premiere executive search firm for the digital infrastructure industry.  With 50+ years of experience, no other firm can match their knowledge, discretion, and connections with the best top level talent in the sector.  Are you seeking great business minds for your digital infrastructure business? Contact Portman Partners at www.portmanpartners.com.   This week we have a special guest who is one of the world’s leading diversity and inclusion advocates in and out of the data centre space.   ​Dr Terri Simpkin has enjoyed a successful career which spans global academic leadership, general management and human resources management in the private sector.   A forward thinking, industry experienced academic, Terri is invested in the examination of emerging leadership paradigms for the digital age.    She is also an authority on the impostor phenomenon having researched both the personal impact and the implications of the phenomenon on diversity and productivity in organisations.   Terri works with bodies and individuals to establish a working suite of capabilities to better address the challenges of rapidly evolving organisational landscapes.   She has done so with a range of groups, including SMEs, large corporate clients, industry associations and government agencies for nearly two decades.   She is currently working within the digital infrastructure sector on workforce development, the diversity agenda and inclusion projects with a focus on emerging leadership challenges.   Terri today serves as a partner to Portman Partners having previously been the Higher and Further Education Principal at CNet Training and co-author of the world’s first and only Master’s Degree in Data Centre Leadership and Management.   Here at the GBM podcast, we hope you enjoy this episode and do leave us a review and share it with your contacts. We invite you back again for the next episode with another big name in the digital infrastructure space. If you want to get more from the definitive podcast for the business of digital infrastructure, make sure you subscribe to Great Business Minds. See you soon!   ///////////////////////   This episode features our commercial partner Portman Partners, the leading executive search firm working exclusively in the digital infrastructure sector. Visit www.portmanpartners.com for more information.   ///////////////////////   Get more from the GBM Podcast on: Official Website LinkedIn Facebook Instagram Twitter YouTube

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Great Business Minds podcast, the definitive show for the business of digital infrastructure. I’m your host Joao Marques Lima and I use my experience as a digital infrastructure journalist to dig deep into business issues but also get to know those who build our digital world. Great Business Minds is brought to you by Portman Partners, the premier executive search firm for the digital infrastructure industry.  With 50+ years of experience, no other firm can match their knowledge, discretion, and connections with the best top-level talent in the sector. Are you seeking great business minds for your digital infrastructure business? Contact Portman Partners at www.portmanpartners.com. This week we are joined by someone who I have been waiting to chat for a long time, not only for what he is building at the moment and where, but also for his slightly unusual background when compared to other data centre executives. From Portugal, Afonso Salema is heading one of Europe’s largest data centre capital deployments as its chief executive. With a price tag of US$4.2 billion US Dollars, Start Campus’ project in Sines aims to create one of the largest European data centres and redesign how colocation and hosting is done. In this episode we delve into Start Campus and the ins and outs of the venture and much more. For background information, Afonso has a degree in Industrial Engineering and Management from Instituto Superior Técnico in Lisbon and has spent 15 years in investment banking in London, New York and Madrid, covering the renewable energy, energy and infrastructure sectors, having briefly worked for EDP between 2009 and 2011. This deep dive into capital markets around the energy segment has given the executive an interesting advantage in the climate transition that every data centre operator is facing today as well as an exposure to different market challenges. In this episode of GBM, we cover this as well as current topics around data centres becoming a utility, the looming economic recession and how the sector should not ignore the warning bells of Wall Street, and how to navigate the backlash against data centre developments in different geographies due to land, power or water usage. Here at the GBM podcast, we hope you enjoy this episode and do leave us a review and share it with your contacts. We invite you back again for the next episode with another big name in the digital infrastructure space. If you want to get more from the definitive podcast for the business of digital infrastructure, make sure you subscribe to Great Business Minds. See you soon!   ///////////////////////   This episode features our commercial partner Portman Partners, the leading executive search firm working exclusively in the digital infrastructure sector. Visit www.portmanpartners.com for more information.   ///////////////////////   Get more from the GBM Podcast on: Official Website LinkedIn Facebook Instagram Twitter YouTube

Welcome to another episode of the Great Business Minds podcast, the definitive show for the business of digital infrastructure.   Great Business Minds is brought to you in partnership with Portman Partners, the premier executive search firm for the digital infrastructure industry.    This week we are joined by cricket and tennis player Rajiv Ramaswami, who is also an accomplished Indian entrepreneur and chief executive of American cloud computing company Nutanix, a role he took on during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic.   He joined Nutanix from VMware, where he served as Chief Operating Officer of Products and Cloud Services.   Prior to this role, Rajiv led VMware’s Networking and Security business, one of the fastest-growing units in the company, as executive vice president and general manager.   Before joining VMware, he served as Executive Vice President and General Manager, Infrastructure and Networking at Broadcom, where he established Broadcom as a leader in data center, enterprise, and carrier networking.   In his prior General Manager roles at Cisco, he led multibillion-dollar product lines in switching, data center and storage, and optical networking.   Earlier in his career, he held various leadership positions at Nortel, Tellabs, and IBM.   Rajiv earned his BTech in Electrical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology and his Master’s and PhD in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of California in Berkeley.   He is an Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Fellow and holds 36 patents, mostly in optical networking, and joins GBM from his home in the Sunny State.   Here at the GBM podcast, we hope you enjoy this episode and do leave us a review and share it with your contacts. We invite you back again for the next episode with another big name in the digital infrastructure space.   If you want to get more from the definitive podcast for the business of digital infrastructure, make sure you subscribe to Great Business Minds.   See you soon!   ///////////////////////   This episode features our commercial partner Portman Partners, the leading executive search firm working exclusively in the digital infrastructure sector. Visit www.portmanpartners.com for more information.   ///////////////////////   Get more from the GBM Podcast on: Official Website LinkedIn Facebook Instagram Twitter YouTube

Welcome to another episode of the Great Business Minds podcast, the definitive show for the business of digital infrastructure.   Great Business Minds is brought to you in partnership with Portman Partners, the premiere executive search firm for the digital infrastructure industry.    In this episode we are joined by an industry titan who has leading experience in creating, scaling up, and exiting businesses delivering on high return rates.   Byrne Murphy is an entrepreneur with more than thirty years of operations in international development and investment. Three times he brought US concepts to Europe and grew start-up companies into US$1+ billion global enterprises.   After developing high-end mixed-use projects in Washington, DC in the 1980s and ‘90s, Byrne co-founded BAA-McArthurGlen, the company that imported the designer outlet concept to the UK and Europe. After opening the company’s Paris office in 1992, he led its expansion across Europe, resulting in more than US$1 billion in sales.   He then developed private residence clubs, starting with restoring Palazzo Tornabuoni, a 15th-century Medici palazzo in Florence, Italy. The Palazzo underwent a $250 million re-development and is now managed by The Four Seasons. In 2010, the project won Urban Land Institute’s prestigious Award of Excellence for EMEA.   More recently, he co-founded DigiPlex, a sustainable data centre business in the Nordics, with Bill Conway, the Co-founder of The Carlyle Group. The two have recently sold the operator to affiliates of IPI Partners, LLC, a global investment platform focused on cloud hosting and other technology and connectivity-related real assets.   Author of the award-winning book “Le Deal: How a Young American, in Business, in Love, and in Over His Head, Kick-Started a Multibillion-Dollar Industry in Europe”, Byrne also owns and runs Kitebrook Partners, a real estate development and investment company.   In his first major public interview since the DigiPlex transaction was announced in July 2021, Byrne shares with GBM the ins and outs of the deal, as well as his vision and projections for data centre and digital infrastructure investment across different regions.   Byrne also delves into his life journey, the ups and downs, and how he turned things around when things turned really bad.   Here at the GBM podcast, we hope you enjoy this episode and do leave us a review and share it with your contacts. We invite you back again for the next episode with another big name in the digital infrastructure space.   If you want to get more from the definitive podcast for the business of digital infrastructure, make sure you subscribe to Great Business Minds.   See you soon!   ///////////////////////   This episode features our commercial partner Portman Partners, the leading executive search firm working exclusively in the digital infrastructure sector. Visit www.portmanpartners.com for more information.   ///////////////////////   Get more from the GBM Podcast on: Official Website LinkedIn Facebook Instagram Twitter YouTube

Welcome to another episode of the Great Business Minds podcast, the definitive show for the business of digital infrastructure. Our guest in this episode is a successful entrepreneur who has spent the last decade building a business that is today valued at more than US$5 billion. Felix Van de Maele has led data intelligence firm Collibra through record growth and is responsible for its global business strategy. But prior to co-founding Collibra, he served as a researcher at the Semantics Technology and Applications Research Laboratory (STARLab) at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, where he focused on ontology-focused crawlers for the semantic web and semantic data integration. He holds a Master’s in Computer Science and Software Engineering from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and a Master's in General Management from the Vlerick Business School. Outside his HQ, he is a big fan of kitesurfing and in 2019, Felix was named the EY Technology Entrepreneur of the Year in New York. Here at the GBM podcast, we hope you enjoy this episode and do leave us a review and share it with your contacts. We invite you back again for the next episode with another big name in the digital infrastructure space. If you want to get more from the definitive podcast for the business of digital infrastructure, make sure you subscribe to Great Business Minds. See you soon!    ///////////////////////   This episode features our commercial partner Portman Partners, the leading executive search firm working exclusively in the digital infrastructure sector. Visit www.portmanpartners.com for more information.   ///////////////////////   Get more from the GBM Podcast on: Official Website LinkedIn Facebook Instagram Twitter YouTube  

Welcome to another episode of the Great Business Minds podcast, the definitive show for the business of digital infrastructure. In this episode we are joined by someone who has become a walking font of knowledge within the data centre sphere as some would say. David Liggitt is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of datacenterHawk which he started in 2014 with the vision to help customers make better decisions about data center real estate. His 15 years of industry experience and leadership have helped create a global platform trusted and depended on by the world’s largest data center owners, investors, consultants and users of digital infrastructure. His data centre journey started however in 2007, right at the cusp of the boom of the data centre economy. David has also started the datacenterHawk Podcast, an industry-focused video and audio experience exploring relevant digital infrastructure topics. Here at the GBM podcast, we hope you enjoy this episode and do leave us a review and share it with your contacts. We invite you back again for the next episode with another big name in the digital infrastructure space. If you want to get more from the definitive podcast for the business of digital infrastructure, make sure you subscribe to Great Business Minds. See you soon!  /////////////////////// This episode features our commercial partner Portman Partners, the leading executive search firm working exclusively in the digital infrastructure sector. Visit www.portmanpartners.com for more information. /////////////////////// Get more from the GBM Podcast on: Official Website LinkedIn Facebook Instagram Twitter YouTube

Welcome to another episode of the Great Business Minds podcast, the definitive show for the business of digital infrastructure. Our guest this week has a strong capital market background as well as a solid international track record with experience in start-ups through to large international businesses. He has also successfully conducted IPOs and raised private equity for data centre expansion projects. Josh Joshi is a household name in the data centre space having started his career in the 1990s, just before the dot com bubble imploded and dramatically reshaped the gaming board which had a heavy impact on him. Post-bubble, Joshi has led teams across several businesses including at Telecity which became one of the first major data centre M&As globally when it was acquired by Equinix (NASDAQ: EQIX) in 2016 for US$3.6 billion. He has also spearheaded the financial efforts of European player Interxion which was later also snapped up by Digital Realty (NYSE: DLR) in 2020 for US$8.4 billion. Today, Joshi is an operating partner for DigitalBridge (NYSE: DBRG), one of the world’s most active investors in digital infrastructure and he serves as executive chairman of AtlasEdge, Europe’s newest hosting player.  Here at the GBM podcast, we hope you enjoy this episode and do leave us a review and share it with your contacts. We invite you back again for the next episode with another big name in the digital infrastructure space. If you want to get more from the definitive podcast for the business of digital infrastructure, make sure you subscribe to Great Business Minds. See you soon!   ///////////////////////   This episode features our commercial partner Portman Partners, the leading executive search firm working exclusively in the digital infrastructure sector. Visit www.portmanpartners.com for more information.   ///////////////////////   Get more from the GBM Podcast on: Official Website LinkedIn Facebook Instagram Twitter YouTube

This week we are joined by someone who is building what will most likely become the world’s largest data centre campus. The site is so big, it could nearly contain three Cities of London. The most intriguing thing: he says this is the smallest project on the table for the business. We are talking of course about Josh Snowhorn, founder and CEO of Quantum Loophole, who values approachability, accessibility, collaboration, innovation and growth, qualities that have guided Josh’s leadership in the interconnection industry over the last 20 years and building over US$10 billion of value along the way. Josh has pretty much seen and done it all through key founding and executive positions at Terremark, Verizon, Cincinnati Bell, and CyrusOne, recently acquired by KKR and GIP for a whopping US$15 billion. Outside of the data halls, his love for speed and cars has led him to launch TrackRats, LLC, the premier car club for track enthusiasts. He has also been a surfer for 39 years and a snowboarder for 25 years, traveling the globe in pursuit of experiences. Here at the GBM podcast, we hope you enjoy this episode and do leave us a review and share it with your contacts. We invite you back again for the next episode with another big name in the digital infrastructure space. If you want to get more from the definitive podcast for the business of digital infrastructure, make sure you subscribe to Great Business Minds. See you soon!    ///////////////////////   This episode features our commercial partner Portman Partners, the leading executive search firm working exclusively in the digital infrastructure sector. Visit www.portmanpartners.com for more information.   ///////////////////////   Get more from the GBM Podcast on: Official Website LinkedIn Facebook Instagram Twitter YouTube

Our guest this week is a scale-up enthusiastic, board member and advisor. He has worked in the recruitment industry for more than 25 years helping several brands grow their businesses both nationally and internationally. Dave Pye says his style in working alongside Founders and CEOs is very much focused on four ‘Cs’: Creativity, Curiousness, Culture and Collaboration. He has been working with some tremendous clients during the past five years and he often gives keynotes on business and leadership. According to Pye, running a recruitment business today is “tremendously exciting” despite the most unusual and challenging of years that we have faced. Having an advisor alongside you working on things such as people engagement, mastering data, allocating intangible capital and creating increased shareholder value makes the journey even more compelling, he says. In the last few years within the companies he has worked with these have achieved two MBOs, the opening of new offices around the globe, the reshaping of the leadership team and the creation of new products and services. Here at the GBM podcast, we hope you enjoy this episode and do leave us a review and share it with your contacts. We invite you back again for the next episode with another big name in the digital infrastructure space. If you want to get more from the definitive podcast for the business of digital infrastructure, make sure you subscribe to Great Business Minds. See you soon!    /////////////////////// This episode features our commercial partner Portman Partners, the leading executive search firm working exclusively in the digital infrastructure sector. Visit www.portmanpartners.com for more information. ///////////////////////   Get more from the GBM Podcast on: Official Website LinkedIn Facebook Instagram Twitter YouTube  

Our guest this week, is a master of cryptocurrency, an entrepreneur and philanthropist. He has acquired over 30 years of experience in corporate restructuring; M&A; IPO privatisation; private equity and hedge fund investments across mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan before establishing himself as the founder and CEO of Hamilton Investment Management, a global fund manager with multi-billion assets under management, which includes private equity investments in licensed banks, Fintech and social media projects and multi-strategy algorithmic trading funds.  William Je is also the founder of Himalaya Exchange, a global digital exchange with a full ecosystem including a blockchain payment App, a stable coin and a trading coin. Prior to that, Je was the chairman of equity capital markets, Greater China at the Macquarie Banking Group for 10 years, managing its Greater China capital markets and principal investment activities. Prior to Macquarie, Mr. Je served as the joint venture partner and managing Director of China Merchant Securities (Hong Kong) Limited, help building its business in Hong Kong from scratch.  Je has also served as an Executive Director at Credit Agricole Indosuez and a Board member of its securities arm, Indosuez W.I. Carr Securities; Director & Head of Business Development at Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein and a Vice President at NatWest Markets. In this episode, the executive delves into his own story of how he became with the sector as well as the lessons he learnt throughout his journey. Je shares several pieces of advice on how to stay positive and motivated, even in the face of challenges.   Speaking of his passion, cryptocurrency, Je explores the infrastructure needs to support this booming market, as well as the main differences between cryptocurrencies and flat currencies, and why professionals must now start to change their perspective on cryptocurrency, particularly in relation to what institutional investors consider to be an asset class, and adapt processes to enable investors to deal with cryptocurrency more effectively. Here at the GBM podcast, we hope you enjoy this episode and do leave us a review and share it with your contacts. We invite you back again for the next episode with another big name in the digital infrastructure space. If you want to get more from the definitive podcast for the business of digital infrastructure, make sure you subscribe to Great Business Minds. See you soon!    /////////////////////// This episode features our commercial partner Portman Partners, the leading executive search firm working exclusively in the digital infrastructure sector. Visit www.portmanpartners.com for more information. ///////////////////////   Get more from the GBM Podcast on: Official Website LinkedIn Facebook Instagram Twitter YouTube  

Our guest this week is a data centre legend and he is the man responsible for matching talent with the right job, setting the foundations for hundreds of data centre businesses to succeed.   Peter Hannaford has worked for Societe Generale, Waterfields, Schneider Electric and Datacenter People amongst others, and today runs Portman Partners, a boutique executive search and strategic advisory firm focussed on the digital infrastructure sector worldwide.   In this week's episode he shares his journey from how he landed his first job in digital infrastructure to how he became a household name in the sector, having launched several disruptive projects that remain crucial to how data centres function today.   Hannaford also goes over the skills needed to enter this sector and how things are shifting in terms of requirements and diversity.    You will also learn and listen to critical advice and tips on how to break into the digital infrastructure space.   Here at the GBM podcast, we hope you enjoy this episode and do leave us a review and share it with your contacts. We invite you back again for next week’s episode with another big name in the internet space. If you want to get more from the definitive podcast for the business of digital infrastructure, make sure you subscribe to Great Business Minds. See you next week!    /////////////////////// This episode features our commercial partner Enboarder, the first Experience-Driven Onboarding platform and the new way businesses onboard. Check them out here. ///////////////////////   Get more from the GBM Podcast on: Official Website LinkedIn Facebook Instagram Twitter YouTube