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Listening and supporting customers while planning an entrance into the European data center markets has been a main goal for Vantage recently. Hear Josh Buis talk about their strategies and how their customers play a role in their decisions. 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, be sure to subscribe to our podcast. Vantage Data Centers, a North American provider, recently entered the European data center market. As they look to expand in Europe, they’ll be shaping their strategy by paying close attention to their customer's needs. If you’re short on time, check out a few quick takeaways from our chat below. Customers know best Vantage has a clear focus on their customers. That’s why when they’re looking to expand into other markets, they begin by listening to what markets their customers want to be in and move from there. While they have an interest in expanding to tier one European markets like Frankfurt and London, Vantage also continues to watch some of the smaller markets like Milan, Poland, and Zurich. Vantage will continue to track markets all across Europe and listen to where their customers want to be as they continue to grow and expand in Europe. The UK data center market Most of the activity in the UK has been in and around London, but Vantage entered the UK market by acquiring a data center in Wales from local provider NGD. While Vantage will continue to plan and ultimately aim to be a part of the London market, they are happy with their entrance into the UK with their new Welsh facility. Moving forward to a more sustainable future The data center industry as a whole has a focus on the future, but not everyone has their focus set on sustainability. It’s no secret that data centers use a lot of power, and that’s the reason why there have been pushes from providers to make sustainability a goal moving forward. Vantage focus’ on their customers, and more so than any other influence that’s where they are getting the most push to make their facilities more sustainable. While government regulations are being put into place for energy and water use, Vantage has an even higher standard from their customers with requests like being diesel free by 2030 and needing to produce a positive water flow from data centers in 2030. If you enjoyed this video discussion be sure to check out our other HawkTalks on our site datacenterhawk.com

In Podcast 35, David and Mike take a dive into the 3Q trends and analysis based on their thoughts and predictions they made at the beginning of the quarter. 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 3Q 2020 data center overview for North America and Europe. 3Q has wrapped up, you can read more about it on our 3Q 2020 data center market overview. Below are our biggest takeaways and the points we discuss in the podcast above. The biggest takeaway from the last quarter We think this will be a record-setting year for the data center industry even with the challenges that have come with the pandemic. We saw demand spread across all of the primary US markets in the third quarter. Looking back at the second quarter, the Northern Virginia market was responsible for about 70% of the US demand and in third quarter that demand dropped to around 50% of the total US market demand. We saw markets like Chicago, Dallas, Atlanta and others contribute more to the total demand in 3Q. What surprised us in the third quarter In the early 2010’s there was a lot of demand specifically from the financial industry in the Northern New Jersey market. Since that time there hasn’t been that amount of large demand in the market. Then in the first and second quarters of 2020 we saw a lot of those financial companies that had large demand in the past wanting to mature their footprint and bring that demand back into the market. We expected this demand to continue in the third quarter, but instead there was a bit of a pause. This pause could be attributed to the possibility of the state legislature levying taxes on financial trades, which may cause companies to consider moving their IT infrastructure to a more tax-friendly market such as Chicago or Dallas. Looking forward to next quarter At the end of 2020, we will likely be wrapping up the largest demand year ever in the US. What’s more remarkable about that is understanding what took place in 2020 and how the world was turned upside down. So for the data center space to be recording its largest year ever is truly a feat to acknowledge. When looking back at the fourth quarter in 2019, we saw a lighter amount of demand than the previous quarters in 2019. We’re on the side of believing that 4Q 2020 will not follow this trend, but instead be a strong demand quarter to close out the year. 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.

In Podcast 34, we dive into the European data center market trends that we witnessed in the third quarter and talk about their future. We’ve been tracking the major European data center markets for several quarter it’s been interesting to look back and see the changes that have occured during 2020,. In this podcast, we dive into some of the third quarter specifics of the European markets and also look forward to 4Q and into 2021. If you’re short on time, check out a few of our quick takeaways below. Development activity during COVID-19 We saw growth and demand across all the European data center markets in the third quarter. Generally, there was a significant amount of development and leasing activity in these markets even during this COVID-19 environment. The European markets are continuing to be a strong area of growth and look to be in place for more interest moving forward. The Frankfurt data center market continues to grow Frankfurt continues to be an attractive location for data center providers and users moving forward into the rest of 2020 and beyond. One data point that shows this is that it has a lower population with a high density of data centers. Looking at the overall power usage in the city, some estimates show that 35-40% of the power in Frankfurt goes directly to powering data centers. This is a massive jump compared to other major data centers markets with larger populations such as London. What the future looks like for the European markets Predicting the future is always tricky, especially when it comes to the European data center markets. Growth in the data center industry happens when deals get done. This can make figuring out how much growth to expect in a quarter difficult to determine with precision. A good way to get an accurate feel of a market is by finding out if there are a number of deals pending and waiting to get done. In the European markets specifically, there are a lot of pending deals which we expect to lead to good growth in the future. Wrapping up, the European markets continued their growth in the third quarter with the Frankfurt market specifically standing out as an area of consistent activity. The European data center markets as a whole should have a strong fourth quarter as well as continued growth in 2021.

LightEdge started out as an ISP and fell into becoming a data center company which led them to build a data center inside a limestone mine and expanding to 3 colocation facilities. Here’s the story of how they got there. 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. LightEdge began their journey in the data center industry after starting out as an internet service provider and then out of necessity building and operating their own colocation facility. Since then they have become a data center provider with multiple facilities across the US that focus on compliance. If you’re short on time, check out a few of our quick takeaways below. LightEdge’s entrance into the data center industry LightEdge started out as an ISP, but built their first data center in Des Moines, Iowa out of necessity after they deployed their first cloud platform. They partnered with a construction company and built a data center because at that time the idea of a colocation facility had yet to become as wide spread as it is today. Growth into the Kansas City market LightEdge had maxed out the first facility they built with 4-5 years, so they decided to expand into Kansas City with another building. LightEdge got connected with Lamar Hunt and his family, who committed to filling 800,000 SF of data center space if they were to build a Kansas City facility. With that commitment, LightEdge began construction of their 2nd data center which is located inside of a limestone mine that is owned by the Hunt family. Acquiring a third facility in Omaha After building facilities in Des Moines and Kansas City, LightEdge looked to add a 3rd facility to their profile and wanted it to be near their already existing data centers. After surveying options, they settled on building in Omaha because that location would give them a good triangulation between their other two data centers and offer similar hazard risk as their other facilities.

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.

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.

In Podcast 33, we continue our Data Center Fundamentals series and dive into the basics of data center infrastructure. Electrical Infrastructure (Power) Electricity travels along what’s called the power chain, which is how electricity gets from the utility provider all the way to the server inside the data center. A traditional power chain starts at the substation and eventually makes its way through a building transformer, a switching station, an uninterruptible power supply (UPS), a power distribution unit (PDU) and a remote power panel (RPP) before finally arriving at the racks and servers. Data centers also utilize on-site generators to power the facility if there is an interruption in the power supply from the substation. Think of a data center like a giant laptop. The main power cord comes out of the wall (utility power) and is then transformed into usable power for the laptop (little box in the middle of your laptop cord). Finally, if any of the components of the cord fail (main power outage, transformer failure), the laptop has a battery to provide temporary power. Mechanical Infrastructure (Cooling) The amount of power a data center can consume is often limited by the amount of power consumption per rack that can be kept cool, typically referred to as density. In general, the average data center can cool at densities between 5-10 kW per rack, but some can go much higher. The most common way to cool a data center involves blowing cool air up through a raised floor, which is pictured above. In this setup, racks are placed on a raised floor with removable tiles, usually three feet above the concrete slab floor. Cool air is fed underneath the raised floor and is forced up through perforated tiles in the floor around the racks. The warmer air coming out of the servers rises up and is pulled away from the data hall, run through cool-water chillers to cool it, and fed back beneath the raised floor to cool the servers again. In certain climates, data centers can also take advantage of “free cooling” where they use the outside air to cool the servers. Instead of taking the hot air and cooling it to be used again, they allow the heat to escape and pull in the cool air from outside. This process is, as expected, much cheaper and energy efficient than operating more man made cooling infrastructure. Connectivity Infrastructure A data center’s connectivity infrastructure is also important. Without it, a data center would just be a building full of computers that can’t communicate with anyone outside the building. As data centers are the primary foundation for activities happening online, the buildings themselves need to be highly connected. Access to a variety of fiber providers connects a data center to a wide network able to provide low latency connections and reach more customers. Fiber traditionally runs into a data center through secured “vaults” and into the building’s meet-me-room or directly to a user’s servers. A meet-me-room is a location where fiber lines from different carriers can connect and exchange traffic. Redundancy Redundancy is communicated by the “need” or “N” plus the number of extra systems. The example above would be considered N+1. The data center needs 10 chillers and has one extra, thus it would be labeled as N+1. If the data center above had 10 extra generators in addition to the 10 they needed to operate, their redundancy would be double their need, or 2N. Redundancy applies to most aspects of a data center, including power supplies, generators, cooling infrastructure, and UPS systems. Some data centers have multiple power lines entering the building, or are fed from multiple substations to ensure uptime in the event a line is damaged somewhere. The same approach can be taken with fiber lines. Data centers support the internet ecosystem that more and more of the world relies on today. As such, they require robust infrastructure to ensure there’s no interruption in the services they provide.

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.

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

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.