datacenterHawk

By datacenterHawkTechnology

datacenterHawk episodes

October 01, 2020 HawkTalk 54 with Bill Fathers, CEO of Cologix
Growth for data center providers is a must, and partnering with hyperscale users can immensely benefit that growth. Get the inside details of what these relationships look like from Bill Fathers, CEO of Cologix.
This is an episode of HawkTalk, datacenterHawk’s series of candid one on one conversations with executives and leaders in the data center industry. If you enjoyed this episode, you can check them all out on our blog. If you’d like to know when we release future episodes, you can subscribe to our channel.
Cologix has made it a goal to own the most connected facilities, known as carrier hotels, in the markets they’re in. Bill Fathers, CEO of Cologix, sits down and discusses this and other strategies they have and how they plan to grow in the future.
If you’re short on time, check out a few of our quick takeaways below.
The recent area of growth for Cologix
Cologix has kept the same value proposition for its customers over the past 20 years with a focus on network dense carrier hotel type facilities.
The Cologix customer enters their facilities for one of two reasons, they want access to a dense number of carriers, and they want to connect to other Cologix customers.
This is made more interesting with the rise of public cloud. Cologix’s number one customer type has shifted to the major cloud service providers, such as Amazon, Microsoft, Google, etc. who all want to be connected to one another and because Cologix already operates highly connected carrier hotels, the relationship makes sense.
Hyperscale growth in the Columbus market
Cologix has seen the interest from major Hyperscale users such as Google, Facebook, and Amazon in the Columbus market.
Columbus offers a central location as well as tax incentives aimed at data centers, so it makes sense that these large companies have built 600+ acres of data center space in this market. This has been a welcome sight for Cologix since they already developed and owned the carrier hotel in Columbus before the interest from the hyperscale users.
With the massive increase in traffic that their carrier hotel has seen, Cologix has decided to build an additional 24MW facility to accommodate other cloud service providers.
Cologix’s presence in Canada
Montreal first piqued the interest of Cologix because of its extremely low cost of electricity as well as it being a high percentage of renewable energy.
One of Cologix’s first acquisitions was to acquire the carrier hotel in Montreal, and shortly after they grew into the Toronto and Vancouver markets as well.
Their first goal for these markets was to own the carrier hotel environments there. Then after five years they implemented their second phase of growth which was to add additional facilities in each of these markets. Moving forward, Cologix has started building new 30MW+ build to suite facilities specifically for hyperscale users in Montreal, & Toronto.
As cloud service providers have risen to prominence, their connectivity requirements have matched up well with data center providers who focus on connectivity, like Cologix. Bill Fathers and his team hope to continue growing along side these prominent cloud service providers that are changing the industry.
27 min
September 22, 2020 HawkTalk 53 with Bill Winsininski, CRO at Digital Crossroad
Digital Crossroads CRO, Bill Winsininski, unpacks the Chicago data center market and talks about some of the innovations at their newest facility in the market - that resides in Indiana.
This is an episode of HawkTalk, datacenterHawk’s series of candid one on one conversations with executives and leaders in the data center industry. If you enjoyed this episode, you can check them all out on our blog. If you’d like to know when we release future episodes, you can subscribe here.
On HawkTalk 53, Digital Crossroad’s CRO Bill Winsininski joins David Liggitt to discuss the Chicago data center market as well as their new facility that is slated to go live in 4Q this year. The facility, even though it’s located in Indiana, is less than 15 fiber miles away from downtown Chicago and is directly connected to the carrier hotel in Chicago, 350 E. Cermak.
If you’re short on time, check out a few of our quick takeaways below.
Characteristics of the Digital Crossroad facility
The Digital Crossroad facility is located on Lake Michigan which they take full advantage of by using 900 gallons of water per day from the lake as a cheap and renewable source of cooling, not to mention the views the lake provides.
Digital Crossroad has big plans for its campus just outside of Chicago, including 1.7 million square feet in its final stage. Phase 1 of the campus is planned to go live this October with their first 20 megawatts.
Chicago will be looked at by bigger data center users moving forward
One of the most effective ways for states to bring economic activity to a market is to add incentives. The state of Illinois did just that when they put in place tax incentives that would eliminate sales tax for data center providers who invest at least $250 million dollars to building data center facilities in the state.
This is a clear attempt to attract new IT investment, and it seems to be likely that more of the bigger data center providers and users who are looking to build new facilities will give Illinois and the Chicago market more looks.
Future data center industry trends
Bill has been in this industry for a long time and has seen it grow to what it is today, we took the opportunity to get his predictions on where it’s going to go in the future.
The constant change and improvement in technology is the primary trend for Bill. 5G will continue to become more widespread and relevant, which will make the overall speed of wireless technology increase exponentially.
Specifically, in this time of COVID-19, we’ve seen how so many people have begun to utilize technology more in their daily lives whether their ordering groceries online or jumping on a video conference with co-workers. We’re truly seeing a paradigm shift in the way people use technology in their daily lives.
20 min
September 15, 2020 What is Data Center Infrastructure? - Data Center Fundamentals
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In Podcast 33, we continue our Data Center Fundamentals series and cover the basics of data center infrastructure.
Electrical (Power): Electricity moves through a “power chain” from the utility to the server—typically substation → building transformer → switching station → UPS → PDU → RPP → racks/servers, with on-site generators backing up the facility if utility power is interrupted. Think of a data center like a giant laptop: wall power gets transformed into usable power, and a “battery” (backup systems) keeps things running during failures.
Mechanical (Cooling): A data center’s usable power is often limited by how much heat it can remove per rack (density). Many facilities cool around 5–10 kW per rack, though some go much higher. The most common setup uses a raised floor: cold air is pushed under the floor and up through perforated tiles, hot exhaust air is pulled away, cooled via chillers, then recirculated. In some climates, “free cooling” uses outside air to reduce costs and improve efficiency.
Connectivity: Without strong connectivity, a data center is just a building of computers. Multiple fiber providers enable low-latency access and broader customer reach. Fiber typically enters through secured vaults and routes to a meet-me-room (where carriers interconnect) or directly to customer servers.
Redundancy: Redundancy is described as N plus extras (e.g., N+1) or multiples (e.g., 2N). It applies across power, generators, cooling, UPS, and even diverse utility feeds and fiber paths. Because data centers underpin the internet, they need robust, redundant infrastructure to avoid service interruptions.

30 min
September 04, 2020 HawkTalk 52 with Gil Santaliz, CEO at NJFX
The internet doesn’t magically float through the air from continent to continent, it travels via giant cables at the bottom of the ocean. Get an insiders perspective from Gil Santaliz, CEO of NJFX, a cable landing station in Wall, New Jersey
You don’t often associate Wall, NJ with Europe and South America - but for NJFX, they’re more connected than you think. Gil Santaliz is CEO of NJFX, a data center and subsea cable facility in Wall, NJ that has access to cable directly connected to multiple points in Europe and South America. We got his take on the data center industry as a whole and specifically in Northern New Jersey in our latest HawkTalk video.
If you’re short on time, check out a few of our quick takeaways below.
Why cable landing stations are significant to the data center industry
Cable landing stations represent the transmission of 99% of global internet traffic. These stations are where the subsea cables land and connect continents. NJFX specifically, located in Wall, New Jersey, is a landing station for 4 cables. These 4 cables, connecting North America to Ireland, Denmark, Norway, The UK, and Brazil.
Trends in the Northern New Jersey data center market
datacenterHawk has recently seen an uptick in activity, specifically from financial companies in the Northern New Jersey data center market. From Gil’s perspective, the recent changes in the culture due to Covid-19 in New York has made it difficult for people with any interest to get to the data centers in the market. As a result, activity has been spilling into adjacent markets like Northern New Jersey.
Future trends in the data center industry
In the US, data centers have consistently grown in areas where there are tax incentives attracting data center companies to build. Areas that have not had these types of programs in place have seen the missed opportunities of having data centers built in their regions. However, these same regions have seen a slow increase in property taxes, negating some of the benefits of the original tax incentives. This could cause states and areas with no property taxes, like New Jersey, to attract more data center activity.
22 min
August 25, 2020 What is the Cloud? - Data Center Fundamentals
In Podcast 32, we continue our Data Center Fundamentals series and answer the question “What is the cloud?”
The most simplified way to describe the cloud is the use of virtual servers versus the use of physical servers. Utilizing someone else's IT infrastructure instead of having it yourself describes how people use the cloud today.
If you’re short on time, check out a few of our quick takeaways below.
Operating in the cloud has distinct advantages, primarily driven by the absence of physical infrastructure and the associated CAPEX. Instead of physically commissioning and installing new servers as you would with colocation, cloud servers can be deployed almost immediately and at a lower initial cost. Users also have easier access to their cloud ecosystem and can interact online instead of physically managing the servers from inside the data center.
There are three use-cases of the cloud: private cloud, public cloud, and hybrid cloud. Each one has their own benefits and challenges.
Private cloud
Private cloud is your most controllable type of cloud deployment. Typically this is infrastructure in an area where you know where the physical servers are and they are dedicated just to you. This allows access only to the hypervisor or software layer that assigns workloads to the physical servers, but physical servers are only accessible by a single tenant.
Public Cloud
With public cloud you might not know exactly where your physical servers are, but you know the region they’re in. In contrast with private cloud, physical servers may be shared by multiple customers. This allows access to your data when you need it with a lower latency in that particular region. Some examples of companies who utilize public cloud include Azure, AWS, Google Cloud Platform, IBM Softlayer.
Hybrid Cloud
Hybrid cloud is exactly what it sounds like. It can be a mixed use of public, private, colocation, and even some on premise IT services. Companies will typically use a hybrid cloud approach to accommodate applications with different requirements around security, latency, etc.
Almost every company utilizes the cloud in some capacity. It solves problems that leasing physical servers can’t. Instead of housing a handful of racks on premise or going to colocation, now most small companies deploy their systems straight to the cloud and large companies utilize the cloud in various operations.
While the cloud has taken some requirements away from colocation, it has substantially increased the demand for colocation overall. In fact, cloud adoption is one of the biggest sources of data center absorption, based on our analysis and discussion with top providers, and we expect to see that trend continue.
Other things we talked about:
-The benefits and challenges of the colocation side of the cloud
-How COVID-19 has changed how businesses utilize the cloud
-The reality of the cloud take over
27 min
August 18, 2020 HawkTalk 51 with Andy Stewart, CEO at Evoque Data Center Solutions
Becoming the CEO of a company is no easy task, especially in the middle of a pandemic. Evoque’s new CEO, Andy Stewart tells us about the process and where he plans to take Evoque in the future.
As Evoque’s new CEO, Andy Stewart gives us insight to what it has been like assuming the executive role during this strange time. He comes from a CFO position at TeirPoint from which he can be credited for helping build from its one data center to now having dozens all across the US. He discusses what has led him to this current opportunity and what his plans are for the future of Evoque.
If you’re short on time, check out a few of our quick takeaways below.
Hyperscale growth has been a trend we’ve seen, but Evoque has a different plan
Evoque has been a retail enterprise data center provider since it’s beginning. That’s what they’ve based all of their facilities on and that’s the customer segment they will continue to pursue moving forward. Hyperscale users get a lot of attention, and in that attention are data center providers who look to land those big MW deals. Andy tells us that Evoque plans to pursue and have relationships with the hyperscale companies, but they’re going to keep the enterprise users as their main focus and double down on them for the 2nd half of 2020.
Evoque & datacenterHawk both think enterprise activity will grow in the 2nd half of 2020
The enterprise sector of the data center industry was no doubt affected by COVID-19. These enterprise businesses put more focus on the safety of their employees rather than their IT infrastructure needs. As time moves forward and there is more clarity around COVID-19 and what the future will look like, you should expect to see enterprise activity pick back up and make up for the pause in the first half of 2020.
The importance of connectivity
The decisions of where to put your IT equipment, how to manage your network, how to manage your public cloud are all choices that need to be thought about in the same conversation. When Evoque bought their data centers from AT&T they were faced with the challenge of not being highly connected. Over the last 18 months, Evoque has focused its strategy on bringing in more high quality, globally-connected carriers into their facilities to make them more carrier-neutral and carrier dense.
We also talked about…
The challenge of becoming a CEO during a pandemic
Evoque has data centers in Singapore and Hong Kong, which put them in a position of being able to learn from those first lockdowns and put into practice a more advanced strategy when lockdowns happened in other areas of the world.
What data center providers can do to not only help their customers today but also in the future
Don’t forget to check out the rest of our HawkTalk's and don’t miss out on our latest release of market data for the data center industry.
18 min
August 11, 2020 HawkTalk 50 with Russell Cozart, Senior Vice President, Marketing & Product Strategy at Cyxtera
This is an episode of HawkTalk, datacenterHawk’s series of candid one on one conversations with executives and leaders in the data center industry. If you enjoyed this episode, you can check them all out on our blog. If you’d like to know when we release future episodes, please subscribe.
We recently hosted Russell Cozart, Senior Vice President of Marketing and Product Strategy at Cyxtera as part of our HawkTalk series. Russell started in the data center industry 15 years ago with Terramark and has spent time at Dell, VMWare, and prior to joining Cyxtera, managed GE’s cloud hosting portfolio.
We covered topics like what it looked like to launch Cyxtera three years ago, the trends that are informing their go to market strategy now, and his read on the challenges enterprise IT leaders are having today.
You can check out the full interview in the video above, or if you’re short on time, skim some of our top takeaways below.
Focus On Focus
After acquiring Century Link’s data center assets, the Cyxtera team focused on how they could make and deliver data center products and services better - and faster. Russell summarized it as the team asking themselves: how do we deliver the core value that we want to deliver with the combination of innovation, stability, and resiliency that customers had come to know with the Century Link data center asset?
Part of that required a renewed focus. For example, the data center team spun their cyber security offerings off into separate companies so that they could focus more on delivering a world class experience to their enterprise customers.
COVID-19 Has Accelerated, Not Changed, IT Mandates
Particularly with COVID-19, the mandates placed upon CIOs and IT teams have remained the same - just accelerated. Everyone is asking how they can get to Point B faster.
These leaders are looking for partners that can help them as they start to charge faster down the path of digital transformation. That trend of transformation is likely to hockey stick, especially around people using a hybrid combination of public cloud and colocation.
IT Challenges Remain The Same
While IT mandates remain the same, so do the challenges of the enterprise data center user.
CapEx budgets are shrinking, many are supporting aging legacy infrastructure, and the drive to a hybrid IT strategy has left many with skills gaps and complex solutions. These have historically been challenges in the enterprise IT space, but now with COVID-19 the pressure is heightened.
At the same time, leaders are trying to get what they need without sacrificing core tenants of delivering on their own IT strategy, like staying flexible and agile while being fast to market. This flexible and agile environment is top of mind for a provider like Cyxtera as they think about bringing products to market.
How To Build Products That Resonate With Customers
Maintaining a solid roadmap that leads to successful products across the globe takes work.
Cyxtera has a presence across 29 markets globally and has invested heavily in developing an intimate understanding of their customers and their challenges. This enables them to then map out an architecture that will assist their customers in their journeys and ultimately ingest it into Cyxtera’s roadmap to ensure they bring valuable products to market.
Looking Forward
Looking forward, “the next 3-5 years are going to be game changing for the industry”, Russell says. Data center providers are on the precipice of major changes, driven primarily by the changes we’re seeing in the enterprise.
The next 3-5 years are going to be game changing for the industry.
Russell Cozart Senior Vice President of Marketing and Product Strategy at Cyxtera
“[At Cyxtera, we’re] excited to deliver the cutting edge and make sure that’s something that resonates with customers. Their lives are changing and that’s for us and the industry as a whole make sure we’re there.”
20 min
August 04, 2020 HawkTalk 49 with Todd Cushing, President at 1623 Farnam
1623 Farnam’s president Todd Cushing discusses the importance of carrier hotels and connectivity
This is an episode of HawkTalk, datacenterHawk’s series of candid one on one conversations with executives and leaders in the data center industry. If you enjoyed this episode, you can check them all out on our blog. If you’d like to know when we release future episodes, you can subscribe here.
On HawkTalk 49 David chats with Todd Cushing about 1623 Farnam and what it means to be a carrier hotel in today’s data center industry. They discuss the importance of connectivity as it continues to be a higher priority to businesses today, and the growth of the Omaha data center as a whole.
If you’re short on time, check out a few of our quick takeaways below.
The value of the carrier hotel
Carrier hotels are places where connectivity lives, whether it’s regional, long haul, dark fiber, or another type, the carrier hotel is a location for it all to aggregate. Connectivity has become an important factor in the last 5-10 years as businesses have learned to create mature IT infrastructure that ultimately allows their business applications to work more efficiently.
1623 Farnam - a rich ecosystem of connectivity
1623 Farnam has become a crucial part of connectivity growth in the Midwest. The company is focused on a better network, lower latency, and faster connectivity. The growth of fiber in Omaha is a big reason why 1623 Farnam has put so much of their focus on connectivity. With the fiber infrastructure continuing to grow they see it as an opportunity to control fiber access in Omaha.
The Omaha data center market and why it’s growing
It’s not surprising the recent major growth has come from hyperscale users. From social media companies to major search engines, they’ve all established a presence in Omaha which is causing continual growth to the area.
We also talked about…
The transformation of 1623 Farnam, from a bank building to Omaha’s carrier hotel
Todd’s prediction of the creation of data in the coming years
The impact of COVID-19 on the data center industry
Don’t forget to check out the rest of our HawkTalk's and don’t miss out on our latest release of market data for the data center industry.
21 min
July 30, 2020 Data center predictions for 2H 2020
In Podcast 31, David and Mike take a quick look back at the first half of 2020 and also take a look forward to discuss what the second half will look like for the data center market.
This is an episode of HawkPodcast, datacenterHawk’s viewpoints on the data center industry. If you enjoyed this episode, you can check them all out on our blog. If you’d like to know when we release future episodes, you can subscribe to our newsletter on our site.
2Q has wrapped up, you can read more about it on our 2Q 2020 data center market overview, but we’ve started to look forward to the 2nd half of 2020. Below are a few of the points we discuss in the podcast above.
Big demand in 2nd half of 2020
We think the 2nd half of 2020 will look similar to the 1st in that demand will continue to be pushed forward by big buyers all across the industry. The enterprise sector of the data center industry took a bigger hit from COVID-19, but we expect to see those businesses rebound with increased demand in 3Q and 4Q.
Markets that will be active in 2nd half of 2020
After seeing the trends from 2Q, we think that there a few markets primed for activity in the 2nd half of 2020:
Portland – Though only a handful of providers have a Portland presence, it continues to see healthy growth due to the attractive power costs and connectivity to subsea cables.
Chicago – Tax incentives passed in 2019 were a factor in winning opportunities in 2Q. Given the large population and need for companies to be near their users, we expect growth to continue through the second half of 2020.
Northern New Jersey – This market had a strong absorption quarter and continues to surprise in 2020 after it’s been quiet in recent years. Northern New Jersey had a lot of activity back in 2011-2013, so we think that there may have been some long term contracts in place that are now starting to expire, and naturally, some companies will be making decisions that could cause activity and movement in this market.
Data center growth in Europe
The European data center industry has different challenges than the US does, a main one being that the growth is happening in different countries. Even with those challenges, we expect to see hyperscale maturity in the major European markets. This growth should trickle down to the secondary European markets as well.
Other things we talked about:
• Our 2Q 2020 Data Center Market Overview
• HawkTalk 45 with Andy Cvengros about the Chicago market
• HawkPodcast 30 with our lead European analyst, Dan Scarbrough
Don’t forget to check out the rest of our HawkPodcasts and don’t miss out on our latest release of market data for the data center industry.
17 min
July 28, 2020 HawkPodcast 30 - European Data Center Markets
In Podcast 30, David is joined by datacenterHawk’s lead European analyst to discuss some of the trends we’ve seen in the European data center market.
Check out a few quick takeaways from our conversation below.
This is an episode of HawkPodcast, datacenterHawk’s viewpoints on the data center industry. If you enjoyed this episode, you can check them all out on our blog. If you’d like to know when we release future episodes, you can subscribe here. You can also click here if you want to read our 2Q 2020 data center overview for North America and Europe.
European Demand Trends
Looking back at 2019, the majority of the activity in Europe was seen in a few markets, with Amsterdam receiving most of that activity. So far in 2020, the demand is more even across the five main European markets, including Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam, Paris, and Dublin. Growth in Frankfurt, Paris, and Dublin seems to be increasing in 2020.
European Hyperscale Growth
American data center providers have taken an interest in the five major European markets in the past year. This new interest has attracted more hyperscale users to look at these European markets, which has created more competition for the regional European developers and has caused them to shift their strategy.
Emerging European Markets
With major European markets receiving increased development interest from US data center operators, regional developers in Europe are expanding in other locations. Areas like Zurich, Warsaw, Marseille, and Barcelona are emerging markets expected to see growth based on that trend. The maturity of the subsea cable industry is also creating interest in these smaller European markets as well.
Don’t forget to check out the rest of our HawkPodcasts and don’t miss out on our latest release of market data for the data center industry.
32 min