datacenterHawk

The History of CyrusOne

Since 2001, CyrusOne has competed at the forefront of the data center industry as a respected leader and innovator. Today, their portfolio includes more than 40 enterprise-class facilities across 3 continents and more than 4 million square feet of total net rentable square footage.

CyrusOne is also known for introducing industry firsts such as the CyrusOne National Internet Exchange (IX)interconnection platform, Massively Modular® data center engineering and an online purchasing interface known as Data Center Marketplace. And in 2013, CyrusOne began trading on the NASDAQ Exchange under the symbol CONE.

We recently spoke with Matt Pullen, the Executive Vice President and Managing Director of Europe for CyrusOne, about the current state of CyrusOne operations and what the future holds for them and other data center operators.

Pullen is responsible for driving the growth of CyrusOne’s operations in Europe and delivering the very best in data center excellence to CyrusOne’s hyperscale and enterprise customers worldwide. And as he shared with us, in addition to continuing to promote excellence across everything that CyrusOne delivers, the company is also eagerly searching for answers to what everyone continues to ask about the environmental impact of data centers around the world.

The Sustainability Question

With some of the largest companies in the world as their customers, CyrusOne is invariably a part of the sustainability commitments made by their clients. Pullen makes it clear that sustainability isn’t just something CyrusOne looks at passively — they’re committed to leading the conversation.

The data centers CyrusOne builds today will hopefully serve customers for decades to come, meaning that data centers aren’t just responsible for responding to today’s sustainability questions, but tomorrow’s as well. As Pullen explains, if we concentrate on solving yesterday’s problems, we’ll be locking ourselves into data center designs and systems that may be ill-suited for the environmental challenges of the future. With ever-increasing demands, solutions won’t come easy.

Pullen shares that some data centers used to view 40-50% utilization as high, but now CyrusOne has customers who will run close to 100% utilization. Considering that customers have their own corporate targets, the responsibility rests on Pullen and his team to make sure they’re providing the most efficient data centers out there.

At the end of the day, data center utilization rates are reaching unprecedented heights. So in addition to maintaining an adequate PUE and water utilization efficiency, CyrusOne has to grapple with density numbers jumping from 7.5 kW per rack to around 12.5 kW per rack and the increase in the stress on cooling efficiency that brings with it. The conversation for a solution, Pullen shares, is still ongoing.

Data centers will have to communicate with local governments to get on the same page about whether data centers operating at a higher temperature may be an operational option or if there are other solutions out there. Whether governments will step in with regulatory measurements or if they’ll allow data centers to continue to self-regulate is yet to be seen.

If data center providers hope to determine their own future, they’ll have to act fast. While we can daydream about a future where data centers may one day fit in our pockets, Pullen is quick to point out that the miniaturization of data centers hasn’t happened since he joined this industry — and it doesn’t look like it will soon. This means that it’s up to companies like CyrusOne to innovate to sustainably serve their clients before governments feel the impetus is on them to step in and facilitate changes.

For those looking to break into the data center market, the sustainability side of this equation is yet unanswered — leaving room for those who are capable of providing excellent service in an environmentally friendly way to make a mark.

Adapting to the rapidly shifting data center services market by taking a hybrid approach that straddles the line between being a service provider and being a consultancy.

What Are the Data Center Trends That Deft Sees for 2021?

Deft serves a lot of different kinds of customer needs: Hybrid Cloud services, colocation, management of both on and off premises networking assets, and third-party service integration. Kubernetes and other container-based Cloud servers are some of the hottest products for a lot of their clients. Auditing and consulting services are also quite popular. Public Cloud has become an important cost saving component in quite a few client networks. AWS and Azure are go-to resources, even for hardcore co-location clients. Almost everyone has a hybrid solution, at the end of the day.

Analysis of customer workloads allows Deft to advise clients through their data planning stages. One of the most important questions that they ask is: How are the clients utilizing the technology in their possession, and where do they want to be in the near and the distant future?

Deft has found that some clients leap fully into the Cloud before they really look. It is often in a client’s best interest to slow down, and not just blindly commit to putting all of their operations in the Cloud. The more time and attention put into a detailed, nuanced plan, the better the functionality and cost savings. Getting better metrics for the use of each business application and examining the potential growth of each app over the next few years, are two of the keys to a successful migration.

This form of analysis represents the consultancy side of Deft’s business model. They find themselves fighting against initiatives that drive businesses to ‘follow the leader’ just because senior leadership read some generalized studies that urged full Cloud conversion. They encourage a more scientific approach to future planning, preventing clients from chasing buzzwords unless the metrics and cost considerations bear out such a dramatic technology shift.

Over the last five years, Deft has been able to go to the locations where clients wanted to migrate, following them to several continents throughout the world. Big business partners will often ask for services in the likes of Sydney, Brazil, Tokyo, and Amsterdam. Once data center services are up and running in those new locations for their old clients, Deft will open up the doors to new customers in the region.

Typical hybrid data center services that are on offer in these new locations include: Ping/power/pipe, MSP services for AWS, white glove services like disaster recovery, automated backup, managed firewall solutions, security monitoring, connectivity solutions, IP transport and transit, backbone services, and edge network solutions.

Each facility is close to a peering point with low latency, which can then be used as a way to scale businesses all over the region. Because Deft is privately held, they can do what is best for their clients and closely follow their needs with bespoke services. Then the most successful of these specialized services can become a more broadly available product, open to all clients.

Around 40 percent of Deft’s clients have some kind of global footprint, while 60 percent are strictly U.S. based at the moment. However, a high percentage of those U.S. companies are multihomed throughout the nation. Points of presence throughout the continental United States allow Deft to offer low latency edge networking solutions, comprehensive data backup plans, and communications solutions that can virtually shrink the distance between satellite offices.

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What is the cloud?:

https://www.datacenterhawk.com/blog/what-is-the-cloud-data-center-fundamentals

Video with Tag Greason, QTS's Chief Hyperscale Officer:

https://www.datacenterhawk.com/blog/hawktalk-25-with-tag-greason-chief-hyperscale-officer-at-qts

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With billions of people and tens of billions of devices online today, there’s never been a bigger need for computing infrastructure and data facilities.

Hyperscale Data Centers: The Way of the Future

With billions of people and tens of billions of devices online today, there’s never been a bigger need for computing infrastructure and data centers. What’s paving the way for companies to scale operations faster than ever before? Hyperscale data centers.

What Is a Hyperscale Data Center?

A data center is a building that houses an organization's servers and IT equipment. A private, or enterprise data center serve strictly as a resource for the businesses that own them. A multi-tenant, or colocation data center is used as a means of providing infrastructure services to the public.

When people refer to hyperscale data centers, they are most often referring to the customers who own or lease a given data center, as well as the size. Tag Greason, Chief Hyperscale Officer at QTS, defines these companies as those who will either build/lease 20+ MW at a time or who will gradually expand to that number over time in 1-3 MW chunks. There are only a small handful of companies in the world who will make those large initial commitments. These are the cloud service providers; Amazon (AWS), Microsoft (Azure), Facebook and Google (GCP). There are a couple dozen more who may grow into that 15-20 MW range over time. These are SaaS and other companies like SAP, SalesForce, Workday, Uber, Lyft, and Twitter.

So, a hyperscale data center is one that has been built by a hyperscale company or one that has been designed specifically to meet the needs of a hyperscale company. Many of the latter type are designed in partnership with the company who is leasing the space as part of the pre-leasing process.

The Rise of Hyperscale

As our world becomes increasingly technological and the demand for storage and compute services has grown, so has the need for facilities to handle these needs.

Two trends have driven the need to large-scale IT infrastructure. When cloud computing platforms began to emerge in the late 2000s, they acted as demand aggregators for businesses who were looking to convert their on-premises IT workloads. Cloud platforms allow users to provision resources and scale quickly, often remotely and near-instantaneously. And the companies who provide these services could then forecast future growth and “buy in bulk” to meet that demand.

Additionally, the rapid rise of SaaS, streaming, and social media further drives growth in the industry. All three of these types of companies need massive amounts of storage, compute, and bandwidth to meet their customers needs.

Who Are the Hyperscale Users?

There are now three times as many large-scale data centers being operated by hyperscale providers as there were in 2013. And it’s not hard to imagine which companies might be at the top of that list.

Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and IBM all have hyperscale data centers in every major region of the world, and other top players like Facebook, Apple, Oracle, and Chinese cloud giant Alibaba aren’t far behind. These A-listers can take down over 70 megawatts and hundreds of thousands of square feet at a time.

Next in line are companies with lower present requirements, but who still want the ability to grow a few megawatts at a time. Among their ranks are companies like Salesforce, SAP, Dropbox, Twitter, Uber, and Lyft.

Development, Land Speculation, and Permit Woes

In up-and-coming markets like Madrid and Milan, there's a lot of new development in the data center services industry. Raw land with available local power and resources is being acquired to serve the hyperscale demand in southern Europe. Spain and Italy have been a little slower on the move towards cloud service models, making the potential upside far greater in those regions.

Further north, places like Berlin that have never been primary data center markets are gathering a lot of interest from the key hyperscale players. Companies that are looking to mature their footprint in these smaller markets are particularly interested in local businesses and government. They are quite aware that General Data Protection Regulation standards create a demand for data center services within each country's borders.

In western Europe, permits for data center creation or modification can take upwards of a year, particularly if they involve drawing more power from the grid. This has even impacted the high-tech centers of London, which are rapidly reaching their listed capacity.

The demand for appropriate facilities is so high, there's been some amount of 'land banking' going on, where the big colocation operators will buy development properties in secondary, and even tertiary markets. Some don’t even have a short-term strategy for utilization. They're just trying to get ahead of the curve for future hyperscale demand and are willing to develop appropriate facilities based strictly on forecasting data.

Because of the importance of getting the right land to build and operate these data center services, even companies who are currently leasing are looking to move into lease-to-own or pure ownership positions soon. One of the main value drivers for bigger clients is flexibility, which is reflected by their desire to partner with data centers that can offer them ownership opportunities.

A Glimpse into the Asia Pacific Region

datacenterHawk has recently opened operations in the Asia Pacific region, collecting data for our Insight market reporting platform. The way that data center services are offered in various markets differs quite a bit from North America and the Europe, particularly in places like Singapore, Hong Kong, and Sydney.

Hong Kong is dominated by just a couple of very significant players. Volume has been holding steady over the past few years, without a lot of the dramatic growth seen elsewhere in the world. Some of that can be attributed to the privacy rules that they need to abide by according to the Chinese government, which has made outside investors more reluctant. But facilities are still being used as a landing point for Chinese operators who wish to expand into the rest of Asia.

Singapore is quite a different picture; the desire for investment is there, but the opportunity is lacking. There's been a moratorium on new builds, and they're quite focused on green energy and smarter designs for data center services operations. There's not a huge amount of capacity available now. For any construction that wasn't nearly completed before the pandemic hit, there will continue to be significant delays across the board.

Sydney's development is more robust, and the market is far more open. Regulation is present but more reasonable than a lot of other APAC regions. The big Sydney operators are starting to push into Australia’s secondary markets such as Melbourne and Canberra. Because of Singapore's availability and new build issues, many companies are opting for investment and data center presence in Sydney, either in the short or the long term.

To learn more about Evoque's MGI product, check it out here:

https://www.evoquedcs.com/

Regional Trends in Data Center Services and Markets in 2Q21

Northern Virginia is a market-driven by hyperscale requirements. It saw moderate growth in 2Q, and it's also spreading out to cover a wider geographical area. The sector there is so unique, datacenterHawk is developing a new analysis tool that tracks and reports specifically on hyperscaling trends. It will undoubtedly be useful in other regions as well as some of them grow towards that end of the market.

In a way, Phoenix is positioned to be the next Northern Virginia. The amount of interest from large companies and the volume of new development are both indicators of some big movement in the near future. There's a misconception that there's a lot of supply available in the Phoenix market. That might have been somewhat true up until about three months ago. But now, those sites are seeing a lot of activity, and it's just a matter of time before more capacity is needed.

Speaking of capacity, Portland has doubled in the last two years. A number of providers with major hyperscale and enterprise credibility have established themselves in the area, so hyperscale users that already have ties with these companies can offer an easy onboarding process. Being on the west coast but outside of the metropolitan areas that have development challenges is a plus. The undersea cables are well-positioned to feed expanding demands in Asia. And the mix of hyperscale and enterprise clients means that even though local companies tend to be much smaller than the likes of Dallas or Chicago, there's still a lot of opportunity for high bandwidth data center services at great prices. Which drives more companies to the area, thus snowballing the trend. Great tax incentives and business-friendly attitudes from the local government certainly help as well.

Salt Lake City is an exciting market, continuing to ramp in 2Q. There’s lots of pre-leasing from interested users while maintaining their local client base. The providers there are building big, which historically has been rewarded in the region. Proximity to Silicon Valley certainly helps. The development cycle is lagging behind what was seen in Portland by a little more than three years, so the potential for a boom is there.

As data centers around the world continue to move toward sustainability, Norway’s unique climate and environmental agencies have made 100% renewable energy possible — and the country is setting the standard for others to follow.

What Makes Norway Different?

While cities like London, Paris, and Amsterdam continue to get much of the data center attention in Europe, some are starting to realize that there may be better locations to build a data center than in the cities with the highest PSF rent in the world. Enter Norway —a country where low costs meet high sustainability.

Norway’s cost of electricity is among the lowest in the world (and by far the lowest of European countries), a result of their plentiful natural and renewable resources. The country contains 25 wind farms and over 1,500 hydropower plants, making 98% of Norway’s electricity renewable. Also, according to Norway’s recent government figures, they currently produce an annual energy surplus of 5TWh and plan to raise that figure to 20TWh in the next 10 years.

Green Mountain and Green Energy

We recently spoke with Tor Kristian Gyland, CEO of Green Mountain, about what makes Norway an ideal location for data centers — and how Green Mountain manages to operate all of their data centers on 100% renewable energy.

Green Mountain designs, builds, and operates high security, robust, wholesale colocation data centers. The company currently offers three data centers in Norway: DC1-Stavanger at Rennesøy just outside Stavanger, DC2-Telemark in Rjukan, and DC3-Oslo, which is just 12 miles outside the capital. Each of these data centers are Tier III certified by Uptime Institute for design and facility, and the centers’ existing customers include banks, IT service providers, government agencies, and large enterprises.

When it comes to renewable energy, Gyland credits the country of Norway for making sustainability a viable and affordable option. While the cost of land and power in other cities and countries makes it more difficult for data centers to increase their capacity, Norway’s cost of power is 75% cheaper than FLAP data centers. That means a 10MW facility in Norway can save 155 million euros over a 10-year period when compared to what they’d spend in Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam, or Paris.

Solving for Cooling and Connectivity

One of the most pervasive challenges in the data center industry is the ability to ensure continual cooling throughout the day. At Green Mountain’s DC1-Stavanger, they can use cold water from the deep Norwegian fjords located near the facilities to ensure the most efficient and effective cooling process.

By using gravity, the cold water flows to the green data center cooling station without the need for power. They then only require minimal power to pump the cold water into the data center through heat exchangers (3kW of power for 1000kW of cooling). This unique cooling system results in high-quality, cost-effective, and energy-efficient data center solutions with a PUE as low as 1.2.

Of course, with all of this focus on renewable energy, are Green Mountain data centers able to rival the connectivity abilities of other European data centers? Gyland views connectivity as yet another Norwegian advantage. Due to the investments that have been made in and around Norway over the last three to four years, Norwegian data centers are able to reach 54% of all businesses in Europe with less than 20 milliseconds of round trip. According to experts, such a low latency rate makes it possible to move close to 90% of a data center’s workload from Norway to European countries.

With the lowest power prices in Europe and the greenest data centers in the world, Green Mountain is setting the standard for sustainability. And Norway is a model that other countries can look to as they work to attract productive and energy-efficient data centers.

David Liggitt, founder of datacenterHawk, recently met with Andy Stewart, CEO of Evoque Data Centers, and Peter Roosakos, CTO of Foghorn Consulting. The news on everyone’s mind: Evoque’s acquisition of Foghorn.

About the Guests, and What Prompted the Acquisition

Andy was the CFO and then CSO at TierPoint through over $2 billion worth of acquisitions and funding. He took over as CEO at Evoque about a year ago, which meant that he had to primarily learn the corporate culture and team compositions remotely. Once he established pandemic protocols and got a good look at the internal workings of Evoque, he brought in key executives and revamped the sales model of the company. Each move reflected the industry changes that had been happening since the pandemic started and built towards the overall plan for a post-pandemic future.

Peter started in the mid 90's as the cofounder and CTO of Computerlandscapes Inc. Exodus eventually acquired the consulting company to build out their professional services division. Fast forward eight years, and the cloud was in its infancy. Peter's team at Opelin used these new scaling infrastructure capabilities to serve the needs of smaller companies. HP acquired them in 2007, and he stayed on for a couple of years during the transition period. After he left HP, he started Foghorn with the mission of leveraging the public cloud to move companies forward.

In the front end of the interview, Andy shared what he's most excited about with the acquisition of Foghorn. The Mountain View-based digital transformation company recently agreed to a union of their offerings. He said that the acquisition will change how Evoque goes to market and drastically expand what they can offer to customers. His enterprise clients want better cost management and visibility into their infrastructure usage. Their feedback made it clear: Digital transformation and application-first approaches were the future of his company.

Cloud Computing is the Future... Sometimes

David asked Peter how he talks a client through the planning phase and how long a data center and cloud relationship can last.

Peter noted that, historically, all-in strategies seemed like the most cost effective and straightforward way to go: Either all on-premises, all in colocation, or all on cloud. But digital transformation has put a stress on pure performance over simplicity. So almost everything these days is a hybrid solution, as the apps take center stage. Optimizing workloads to run on the most performant platforms yields far better long term results.

Andy added how this acquisition helps clients plan beyond pure colocation space and power strategies. He mentions that it's hard to stand out from the crowd as a specialist, particularly when cloud computing is such a huge part of the landscape. The flexibility needs to be there. Infrastructure agnostic approaches are far more impressive and can cover clients' holistic needs. It allows a hosting strategy that evolves over time; nothing is static, and nothing is overly painful to adjust to if a new efficiency takes precedence for a client. Andy also shared that an important strategy they’ve adopted includes providing colocation space to niche service vendors that can meet client needs and introducing them to enterprise clients as service partners.

We sat down with Damien Gaynor, Echelon’s Director of Sales and Marketing, to discover what they’ve done to get into the data center space and what they’re doing to stay there. As Gaynor shares, Echelon is working to meet the rapidly expanding global demand for data processing and storage solutions by developing large-scale campuses across Europe (focusing most of their efforts in Ireland). But what makes Echelon different is their focus on sustainability.

Sustainable Energy Isn’t Just a Niche

With the global green data center market expected to grow by $44.92 billion during the 2020-2024 period, it’s no secret that this sector of the market is available for anyone looking to make a splash. As cloud computing continues to leave a massive energy footprint, the option to push renewably powered businesses forward rests in the hands of the data center providers.

Coming from a commercial real estate background, Damien and the team at Echelon recognized this responsibility as an opening in the European market. They noticed that a majority of the power demand came from large metropolitan areas like London, Slough, Frankfurt, Paris, and Dublin. What they realized was that this demand created areas of strain on networks where the transmission capacity experiences real pressure to deal with all the centralized demand. So instead of trying to break into these urban hubs, Echelon has instead focused on creating data centers in rural areas just outside large cities.

Building Close to Renewable Resources

For example, their DUB20 site in Wicklow (which is about 30 miles south of Dublin) is located near the Arklow Wind Bank where SSE Renewables is building one of the largest offshore wind farms in Ireland. When it's complete, it will generate about 800-850 megawatts. A hydrogen production facility is also planned for the DUB20 site. With ample access to water from the Avoca River and the proximity of a source of large-scale renewable energy—plus a national grid connection—DUB20 is ideally suited to facilitate the creation of a long-term, sustainable solution to energy storage.

The idea is to build a data center closer to a source of renewable power and closer to the point of generation so the grid isn't put under so much pressure. Echelon’s theory is that in the short- to medium-term, as the industry moves towards genuinely renewable and environmentally friendly operation, “halfway house” solutions will be required to mitigate against aging and overburdened grid infrastructure. With that in mind, their goal is that all data centers one day be powered wholly by renewable energy.

How Financial Incentives Foster Environmental Awareness

Damien shares that at the end of the day, the push toward providing power through the use of renewable resources will come down to both the data center providers and the occupiers working toward the same goals. Wanting to be green is fantastic, he shares, but are we willing to pay for it? Are we willing to incentivize the person tasked with delivering the data to do so responsibly? If not, people will continue to default to what is cheapest and easiest.

As of today, making an effort to use renewable resources may take some extra energy. But if Echelon is an example of anything, it’s that the market is continuing to trend toward renewable resources, and people everywhere want to work with environmentally conscious companies.

Right now, the use of renewable resources is a competitive advantage. But soon, environmental awareness and responsible power consumption are going to be considered the bare minimum. The data centers leading this charge today are the ones who will be on top tomorrow.

The APAC data center market has distinct cultural and geographical diversity, unique supply challenges, and a high potential for hyperscale growth that make it a market worth looking at closely.

A Diverse Landscape

To get a framework for how major and secondary data center markets work in a certain part of the world, it’s important to understand the regions of the area. For example, in the United States, the larger data center markets include Northern Virginia, Chicago, Phoenix, Dallas, and Northern California. In Europe, there’s Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam, Paris, and Dublin (often referred to as “FLAP-D”).

Turning to Asia-Pacific, the three major cities that immediately come to mind are Singapore, Sydney, and Hong Kong. What makes the APAC data center market so unique is the cultural diversity it represents. This leads to certain markets operating in near isolation because of the cultures they represent.

Japan is seeing growth in Tokyo and Osaka. China has Shanghai and Beijing. On top of that, there’s an increasing amount of capacity across Southeast Asia, which includes Jakarta in Indonesia, as well as Vietnam and Thailand. And last, but certainly not least, there’s significant activity in India where huge amounts of growth can be expected in the coming years. These unique areas come with their own potential, but supply challenges can still exist anywhere.

Market-Specific Challenges

Supply chain challenges and issues delivering power infrastructure continue to pop up all around the globe, and the APAC market is no exception. In Singapore, for example, the government has placed a moratorium on new construction. While this has put a halt on the breaking of new ground, it’s also made it difficult for those who are in the process of building new sites, as the price of building materials continues to rise.

Of course, this issue is specific to Singapore, but that doesn’t mean it’s without a ripple effect. The Sydney market, and Australia in general, has continued to experience steady demand and even seemed to benefit from the slowdown in Singapore. This trend is one we’ve seen happen worldwide—where lack of infrastructure or capacity in one area has pushed demand to a neighboring location (which happens often in the U.S.).

While Singapore has slowed down at the moment, it still remains an important market to keep an eye on in light of its strategic importance. The same can be said for Hong Kong, which represents the gateway into the China market and where power is relatively inexpensive.

Following the Hyperscale Trend

Hyperscale data centers are driving the conversation (and the demand) all around the world, and Asia is beginning to see this play out. While we’ve seen significant investment in subsea fibers that have come from hyperscale centers, Asia is still in the early stages of this process. Part of the reason they’re behind the likes of Europe and the U.S. is because of the sheer size and scale of many of their markets.

India, for example, requires hyperscale operators to develop a completely new and unique strategy. While a large scale and scope of activity may sound like it means there’s more to go around, it has actually led to increased competition as hyperscale operators look to meet the various needs of hyperscale customers.

However, hyperscale is only a piece of the puzzle when it comes to Asia. The entrepreneurial energy that exists across all the various markets means new organizations with new technologies are placing new demands on data centers. Being on the edge of new developments certainly means that the data center markets will continue to grow in both demand and capacity.

Both primary and secondary markets are poised for growth, so the question one has to ask about the APAC data center market isn’t if it will continue to grow, but how fast.

David Horowitz, the SVP and Director of Sales at T5 Data Centers, joins us for a conversation about the Chicago data center market.

David walks us through the Chicago market's current challenges and opportunities, and what he sees on the horizon for T5 and the industry as a whole.

T5 and the Chicago Market

Suburban Chicago has been nurturing a growing data center market for years, and thanks to the presence of players like T5 in the Chicago suburb of Elk Grove Village, the Chicago market is now one of the top in the country.

Horowitz says it was around 2007 that data center providers started buying facilities, land sites, and industrial buildings in the area. Early entrants like Exodus and CenturyLink helped create the fiber-rich environment that exists today, and significant investment from local utility provider ComEd brought the necessary power and utility infrastructure for Elk Grove Village to boom.

With connectivity to downtown Chicago, Elk Grove Village has become the heart of the city’s suburban market. By Horowitz’s estimation, there are roughly a million and a half square feet of data center product in the area, all within a 1.5-mile radius.

Giving Customers What They Want

T5’s success in Chicago and elsewhere is owed to their guiding ethos of putting customers’ needs first. According to Horowitz, the company has learned a lot of lessons through trial and error, but the most significant learnings have come from paying attention to customers — and responding to what they have to say.

Business development has come as a byproduct of simply supporting clients with growing requirements and adapting services to meet customer demand. “We operate the best data centers, “ Horowitz says, “because [our customers] tell us we do.”

Dealing with Uncertainty

One current challenge Horowitz sees for T5, however, is lease renewal. Transactions from eight to ten years ago are coming up for renewal, and many of those customers have a much different perspective on their utilization rates now than when those agreements were signed.

On top of that, migration costs aren’t nearly what they used to be. It’s now much easier to relocate than in the past, and Horowitz says many more customers are shopping around. “There's a lot of uncertainty about how customers are going to treat lease expirations,” he says. But he’s excited about the possibilities that could bring, particularly with build-to-suit opportunities in health care, finance, and with hyperscale users.

What’s on the Horizon?

It’s an exciting time for the data center industry, and Horowitz sees big things coming down the pike.

First, there’s an environmental impact. “Data centers are impactful on the environment,” he says. And T5 is making a big investment in solar panels to support its goals for positive impact. “Sustainability initiatives [are] huge for us,” Horowitz says, not just for T5 internally, but for helping customers achieve their own goals for sustainability as well.

Thinking about the next 15 years, Horowitz dreams of helping the world’s top 100 companies execute build-to-suit properties, landing government contracts, and expanding T5’s business internationally. On the build-to-suit front, Horowitz sees T5 as a collaborative partner, helping with site selection and development — whether they end up owning the facility or handing off keys once the shell is built. The federal government space is also one where Horowitz thinks T5 could support growth from a facility management perspective.

For the data center industry as a whole, Horowitz says the best is yet to come. “A couple years ago, people said it was in the second inning. I still think it’s in the second inning,” he says.