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Podcast by I Love Data Centers
53 Episodes
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The Customer Defines The Edge - Episode 53 - Phillip Marangella by I Love Data Centers
The Greenest Electron is the One you Never Need to Use - Episode 52 - Shawn Mills by I Love Data Centers
Data Centers and Interconnection in Omaha - Episode 51 -Todd Cushing by I Love Data Centers
Measuring What Matters on the Edge - Episode 50 - Bruce Lehrman by I Love Data Centers
I Love Underground Data Centers - Episode 49 - Todd Murren by I Love Data Centers
In this episode I spend time talking with Jason Okroy, Co-founder and CEO of Salute Mission Critical, a US military veteran focused data center services company. Having toured hundreds of production data centers over the years, the facilities I have walked through that were the cleanest and with the most educated facilities staff were those operated by veterans of our armed forces. If you think about it for even a few seconds, this starts to make perfect sense given the training, discipline, necessity to perform under pressure and repetition of complex tasks within the military.
Our conversation covers how and why the company was founded in 2013 and a few of the lessons Jason and his company have learned serving the veteran community as well as the facilities and operations side of the data center industry.
Early on in our conversation, Jeff politely made me aware that he has socks older than me. Apart from this telling me that he definitely needs some new socks, I became even more excited to dig into the interview knowing that he has literally been helping to build the infrastructure that runs the digital world longer than my short 40 years on this planet.
We talk through him helping to start the first ISP in Minnesota, how exactly high capacity optical switching gear works and what a day in the life of Jeff looks like at DC Blox. For good measure we threw in some perspectives gained in light of current events through the lens of my rereading Frank Herbert's epic sci-fi DUNE chronicles and Jeff's rewatching the 2004 Battlestar Galactica TV series. Unsurprisingly, I learned a lot from Jeff in our short time together and I am positive you will too.
Staying on topic re: demystifying the Interconnection Services Industry and our recent Interconnection Playbook launch, I spent time with successful data center and managed hosting entrepreneur Rich Lee who is now spearheading Pureport, a multicloud interconnection provider. Rich happens to also live in Raleigh, NC and has obtained a wealth of knowledge to share with us having had direct experience across a number of successful M&A events within the data center and IT Services industry over the past 2 decades.
We walk through a few of these transactions in detail, lessons he's learned scaling a variety of businesses, as well as the unique interconnection features and products Pureport offers. Prepare for some more knowledge bombs my friends and give this a listen ASAP!
Excited to share with you a few stories from Chris Downie on his professional experience growing into the data center industry. His unique perspective as the CEO of both Telx during the acquisition by Digital Realty Trust in 2015 and Peak10 during their acquisition of Viawest in 2017 (now Flexential) makes this interview extremely powerful.
We also touch on what steps Flexential has taken to address concerns during the COVID-19 pandemic, what a day in the life of a CEO of a data center company looks like and some important lessons he's learned over the years.
The Interconnection Services Playbook, which serves as an attempt to demystify the Interconnection Services Industry, is now released into the wild! Keeping with this topic, I thought it appropriate to interview another one of my favorite people in the industry, Misha Cetrone, Sr. Global Director, Cloud Solution Architecture at Megaport.
Misha drops some technical knowledge about why Interconnection Services are important, how they will continue to evolve, what some tangible uses cases are to consider leveraging these services, how to connect to these services and how they operate at their core level. Listen and learn my friends... listen and learn.
I was lucky enough to grab some time with attorney James Grice for this episode to do a serious knowledge drop regarding data center tax frameworks applicable to the data center asset class. If reading that got you as excited as it did me, you're in the right place!
James and I geek out on tax issues related to the industry, defining how data centers impact a community beyond the W2 FTEs hired to maintain the facility, how growing power consumption can and will need to be addressed... and much much more. Get your legal pads ready to take some notes folks and tune in.
Given how little innovation has gone on in the commercial data center colocation industry as of late, I was skeptical when someone told me the GIGA Data Center located north of Charlotte, NC was delivering a product that was unique. Although modular data centers are nothing new, I was definitely impressed by the novel approach they have gone about deploying their solution and re-thinking the layout of a data center to drive maximum efficiency.
Jake Ring, Co-Founder and CEO, spent time with me talking shop and geeking out about some of the technology they've implemented and lessons learned watching said technology evolve to where it is today.
Data Foundry is one of the oldest privately owned data center companies in the world. They've managed to build a highly profitable business and survive a number of economic downturns over two and half decades by sticking to their core values and being highly selective about the clients they work with.
In this interview I have the privilege of talking to their CTO, Edward Henigin, who has been with the company since inception. We discuss how he migrated from Hawaii to Illinois to Texas and the lessons learned over the years watching an ISP quickly evolve into a data center company. Data center technology, corporate culture, industry evolution and much more is all covered in this podcast!
SD-WAN has been hyped for a few years now as a "game changer" in the industry that will replace WAN MPLS networks. I have definitely seen a rise in the numer of clients and consultants starting to deploy these solutions lately, and can clearly understand the value in the visibility and control these environments provide end users over their networks.
Much like Cloud Computing however, nearly every network service provider is now claiming to have some form of SD-WAN solution. In an attempt to better understand the myriad of options available and the underlying technology behind the solution I pulled in Erik Knight, Founder and CEO of SimpleWAN to talk shop as he was one of the first people to explain this solution to me years ago. Erik is a seasoned entrepreneur and technologist with a big heart and I am positive you'll enjoy this conversation on many levels. Enjoy!
You can find MicroCorp's SD WAN provider matrix here: https://www.microcorp.com/sd-wan-form/
While advancements in the data center industry have made shopping the scene as a consumer seem more complicated, it's actually more accessible than ever. Ryan Barbera and I discuss the red tape and the mystique surrounding the industry and how making your next data center decision isn't as complex as it seems. Tune in and learn how Ryan and I lifted the veil and added resources to help make important digital decisions.
We explore how we are leveraging an ever growing ecosystem of like-minded individuals. Ryan aligns with my core values and beliefs; we explain why this is so critical in the new digital landscape.
Now that the dust has settled with INAP's acquisition of Singlehop, I wanted to speak with one of the brains at the company who was front and center during the transition to get a raw view into the why, how and what's next at the company. Who better than my friend Josh Williams, INAP's now VP of Solutions Engineering who spent 5 years at Singlehop and now leading the entire SE team for the company.
Josh and I are aligned on many levels outside of both growing up in the Windy City in the 80's and 90's. His "gear head" perspective, having worked in various engineering roles on the client side, and love for technology has always been appreciated. We discuss a few multi-cloud case studies, how the new interconnection solutions available are transforming how cloud services are consumed, what drives a client to consume managed services in the first place and trends he sees from the partners INAP works with that are creating clear winners and losers.
I've been trying to make sense of how Megaport, Packet Fabric, PurePort, Equinix's ECX, Digital Realty's Service Exchange, DE-CIX, Epsilon, etc. all differentiate from one another over the past 12 months with little success. Thankfully, my friend and fellow industry trouble maker Christian Koch, having spent time working for a variety of the companies listed above, had the patience to sit and walk me through the nuances. Get ready to be smarter on all the new ways an enterprise can connect to endless possibilities.
Aaron Hughes has spent decades architecting, building and managing various components that make up the internet we all use today. Ever heard of PeeringDB.com? Yeah, that was one of his many "side projects" that was put together in a matter of days because it simply needed to be done and he saw no one else doing it. Since I met the man, he has been a role model of productivity, successfully juggling multiple roles and wearing multiple hats at the same time. His Linkedin Profile says it all to this extent.
Thankfully for me, we both worked together when I first started in the industry and we also happened to live just a few minutes down the road from one another in Santa Cruz, CA. Aaron quickly became one of my favorite people to sit back and talk shop with because I always walked away learning something new and, at some point, laughing until I cried. I am blessed to have had so many opportunities to learn, laugh and cry with Aaron and his equally bright and fun loving wife Stacy. I hope you enjoy listening in on our wide ranging conversation. I'll give you a teaser with 2 of my favorite quotes that came out of it;
"Yes, there is hope, but this hope is predicated on education."
'"Embrace Automation" is the new "Work with your brain and not with your back"'
Enjoy!
Jacob and I are aligned on a mission to bring sexy back to the infrastructure that runs the brave new digital world we live in. Our conversation covers how he evolved from a 2nd Bassoon in the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia to the CMO and cofounder of a transformational cloud service provider to what it's like running a company with your twin brother to how software is, as he says, "eating the world". Dig in, learn something new, and enjoy! I sure did!
You know those moments when numerous people tell you that you "NEEEED" to talk to someone because they think you'll instantly get along, and then you finally meet the person and, in fact, you discover they were spot on? Well, this episode was one of those moments. Paul is a fascinating character with experience in marketing, sales, sales engineering and... traveling the world creating and playing music for world dignitaries. We cover what it was like watching Rackspace evolve from just a few dozen employees to a few thousand while honing in on the customer first culture that has helped the company scale so fast over the past twenty plus years. I also address Rackspace's shift to adopting a managed public cloud service offering, acquiring Datapipe, and the strategic decision made years ago to focus on Open Stack. Listen and learn folks. Listen. and. Learn.
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