Edge Computing and Digital Infrastructure: Interview with Bill Kleyman of Switch

Steve Sidwell:

On this episode, we interview Bill Kleyman, the Executive Vice-President of Digital Solutions at Switch. During our interview, Bill explains the evolution of the data center industry, edge computing, and so much more. Brace yourself, you’re now entering the Tech Bench Podcast.

(theme music plays)

Steve Sidwell:

I’m Steve Sidwell, and very nice to meet you. And thank you for coming on the Tech Bench Podcast today.

Bill Kleyman:

Hi, it’s a pleasure to Steve. Thank you.

Steve Sidwell:

Absolutely. I’ve got James Patrignelli, my cohost.

James Patrignelli:

Steve, very good to be here with you.

Steve Sidwell:

I’m just going to run right in. I had read this recent article that you’d written for Data Center Knowledge. And one of the things you talk about in there is, I mean, it’s the whole point of the article, is how difficult it is getting young people into the data center space. And honestly, I feel like pretty much everybody I talk to has the same thing.

It’s so hard to get young people, to get millennials into XYZ industry that they’re in, except if you’re maybe a video game designer, and pretty much everybody wants to do that. But I guess before I really go any further, what do you define as the data center space?

Bill Kleyman:

That’s a really great way to start. How do you get into a career if you can’t even define it? It’s fascinating in itself, where we don’t want to call it data center anymore. We want to call it a digital infrastructure. Let’s make it something cooler, something a little bit better. And even to your earlier examples where you’ve got younger people who all they want to do is develop and design games, and make this new, cool, shiny thing that’s going to be living in the cloud. But you ask them the question of, “Do you know where this stuff lives?”

There’s an actual physical infrastructure where all of your Xbox games, and all of your Pinterest, and all of your Instagram photos, all of this stuff has a home. And in a world of digital connectivity, this persistently always on society that we live in, you have to be aware of the environments that these things, this data, all of this, this new oil of our generation, which is information and data, where it all resides. And here’s the thing, it’s not all in the cloud.

So, how do we define a data center? If we take a look at this legacy nomenclature, is a physical building with a whole bunch of servers, and networking equipment and gear that’s sitting in an environment. Well today, that’s different. You’ve got stuff that’s attached to maybe like a telecom site. You’ve got things called the edge, you do have cloud, hybrid cloud, multi-cloud environments. So, a data center today is fundamentally different than I think what it used to be even five to 10 years from now, for a goal, excuse me.

And to the point where when we talk to younger people, when we talk to anybody who’s looking into get into this technology space, it’s no longer so much a data center as it is a technology ecosystem, supporting density, supporting things like cognitive systems, not just virtual machines, not just an application or two, certainly not like a pizza box server anymore.

The modern data center, if you take a look at some of the big cloud providers, or even my organization, Switch, come for a tour, you’ll see that it’s not just blinking lights, but literally the foundation for our digital future. It’s a very long winded way to define what a data center is. But I don’t think there’s a really clear cut definition. Maybe us trying to define this model, is what disenfranchise some of the young people in working here in the first place.

Steve Sidwell:

I think so much of it too. Going back to when I was young, I knew, not that I’m not young any more.

Bill Kleyman:

You’re still young, come on.

Steve Sidwell:

You know the things that surround you, and you know what’s the coolest stuff that you know. For a lot of kids, that’s going to be their phone, or maybe their iPad, or whatever. And the things that you can do with it, and whenever, it’s okay, fine. I like this, I’m going to do this because I feel like that’s about as far as I can go in my imagination with the limited set of things that I know. So why would I want to get into, I don’t know, codeX or whatever, when I have never even heard of a codeX.

And that’s like the most microscopic little piece of programming. So, going from there, to all of the things that go into how to get people from may A to B, without even knowing that there’s so many steps between those, try to educate people into, these things exist, and this is what it’s all about. I feel like so many industries are trying to figure out ways to communicate that because we’ve lost so much job training and whatever in the school system.

Educating Students on Data Centers and Digital Infrastructure

Bill Kleyman:

I couldn’t agree more. A lot of it is to do with context. Creating this new aperture, visibility in terms of what these technologies are doing, what they can do in general. And you made a really good point. How do you create a linear, tangible, definition for a young person learning about technology to say, “This is what I want to do, but I also understand that a data center is where all this stuff gets housed.”

Let me give you a really, really quick example. I was doing a keynote address for the incoming class of freshmen for a technical school here in Chicago. And after the conversation, there is this is one young lady, very, very excited, 18 years old, comes up to me and says, “I’m going to be a game designer. And I’m like, “That’s really, really cool. What do you want to do?” She’s like, “I want to design games.” I’m like, “So you want to create like the health bar in Mortal Kombat? What are you trying to do?”

She’s like, “I’m going to be doing computer science, and I’m going to be learning around data engines, and how the flow of information goes through a certain set of programming, and a certain set of variables.” I’m like, “Oh, so you’re creating a cognitive systems?” She looked at me like, “You realize that people at Google and Facebook and other kinds of organizations, Nvidia, who are designing thinking models, they’re going to want to talk to you, because you’re not just creating games, you’re creating game theory. An environment that leverages data to think.”

And you should have seen this young person, her eyes opened up, and she’s like, “These are my possibilities.” It’s not just designing a game, but literally creating engines that think, that can be facilitated in a variety of different kinds of business use cases. Going back to your original point, you make it very, very accurate. It’s the challenge of tying together pieces and components. It’s not just one or the other, but really seeing the big picture in terms of what these technologies do, where they live, and how they’ll impact our future.

Steve Sidwell:

So when young people start getting excited about this, and they start learning it’s not just about the games, and it’s not about the cool titles, it’s about this engine that thinks, so to speak, and the technology that’s evolving. What age do you find that people need to get into that, just really start to be able to get into the industry? What schools are people going to, what age do they need to get involved?

Bill Kleyman:

You know what? High school is too late. Listen, that’s not to say that you shouldn’t be going into high schools, and freshmen, and sophomore classes in technology and business. I’m saying just how critical it is to understand these kinds of environments, and what they’re doing for our everyday connected lives. But realistically speaking, if we want millennials and Gen Z years to save the data center, to save this new digital infrastructure that we work with every single day, it needs to start earlier.

We at Switch, we sponsor first robotics. Entire teams of young people that are building, that’s pretty cool, man, robots to compete, and these massive competitions, I’m sure you’ve seen them on TV, the Battle Boss, and stuff like that.

Steve Sidwell:

[inaudible 00:08:21].

Bill Kleyman:

Yeah. These are so much fun. They carry out specific tasks. It makes people think differently around using these kinds of technologies. But believe me, we’re starting in like middle school, junior high, where we’re opening the eyes of these young students so they can better understand what these systems can do. That they’re so different than some of these movies, and videos, and TV shows that they’ve seen about blinking lights, dark environments, that these are really, really cool ecosystems that once you tour it, and once you actually see them in action, you’ll have a much better perspective.

So, the change has to start with dialogue at very fairly early educational state. Junior highs, elementary schools, for example. And you’re not trying to teach them technology, you’re just trying to build context and awareness. Trying to tie in what they do every single day with the technology that they touch, or where they might live, for example. STEM programs call for diversity. These are the kinds of programs are going to allow us to get more of these young people excited.

A big challenge that we’ve had, and this is what the article talks about too, is that a lot of data center professionals are adopted from IT. And again, I came from that kind of perspective. I was a cloud engineer. I did a lot of IT, networking background at work, but got into the data center because I saw just how powerful and impactful this type of ecosystem can be. Again, you’ve got to start early.

Steve Sidwell:

Turning this to you a little bit. When did you become involved in technology?

Jumping Into Technology at a Young Age

Bill Kleyman:

Oh my God. That’s a good question. Believe it or not, I’m going to give our listeners a little bit of a fun Bill Kleyman tidbit. I wasn’t actually born in this country, I was born in Kiev, Ukraine. And we came to the States in the early 90s, and it’s actually started, and I hope my brother does get a chance to listen to this, but you know telegraphs, right? The [inaudible 00:10:12], the Morse code.

He used to compete at like a Soviet level, and he was one of the top Telegraph, how fast can you send a word, or a number, or a letter across to a different location. He was one of the fastest guys in the Soviet Union back then. And I would sit there, just sit there quietly, and watch him work, and watch him compete. Sometimes he’d let me sit in front of this really cool, shiny silver telegraph, and press the Morse code buttons a couple of times. In fact, I learned from him how to do some of these basics of, here’s my numbers, here’s my longitude and latitude if I ever get lost.

Here’s why this is the nexus. I, for the first time, when I was like maybe four or five, six years old, saw how communication works at such a rudimentary level, I was fascinated by that. And ever since then, coming to the United States, going to school, I got a network engineering degree, I got a master’s in business, and another master’s in information security. It’s been just absolutely inspiring to see the things that we’ve done with technology, and how they can change our lives. And that’s why it’s been hard for me to focus in on any one specific technology, why I love to work with everything from dev ops, to AI, to cognitive systems, to green renewable energies, and how to make a data center a lot more efficient, and everything in between obviously.

But it started at a very young age, impacted by people that I saw around me, even though in a different country. Working with technology, do some really, really cool thing. So believe it or not, even as I’m saying this as a millennial, total crap devices actually is what got me started interested in tech?

Steve Sidwell:

I mean, is this the old like basically like Ham radio, right?

Bill Kleyman:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Steve Sidwell:

That’s like the old ones. I mean, you can build out of a crystal set, and the technology there is so basic, but so in completely understandable?

Bill Kleyman:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). No, absolutely agreed. And that’s how you start. That’s why you’re seeing a lot of these really fun little robotics kits, and get your kids a Raspberry Pi for example. There’s really, really fun ways. I mean, you go from Telegraph machines, to obviously working with a Raspberry Pi device where you can build a full on windows machine with this little tiny board. That’s how far we’ve come, but give that to a young person, allow them to create something. Give digital life to a piece technology. I mean, that’s really sort of an awakening moment.

Steve Sidwell:

Right. Because at that point, starting in grade school, or middle school, or whatever. If you start naming the pieces of the dream, like okay, this is my dream, like you were talking earlier about the young woman that you’d met. Once you start breaking that dream down into just kind of the bullet points of what goes into making that a reality, all of a sudden you’re creating hooks that you can build on, and tie into. And then from there, you can find the places of interest that they have, and start to grow that into a little bubble where it actually becomes feasible.

Because I mean, without each little step, it becomes this kind of a morphous thing that you want to move towards, but there isn’t anything there. And I feel like so much of what has changed in the technology industry over the last 15, 10, 15 years is getting a better awareness of that because things are scaled up so much, the specialties have really become the norm, if that makes sense?

Bill Kleyman:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). It does, and oh my goodness, do you draw an amazing parallel. Just how far we’ve come over the past 10 to 15 years. Do you realize that in the year 2000, just in the year 2000, we used to have those Nokia phones, I don’t know if you remember those or not? You could basically drop them off-

Steve Sidwell:

Oh sure.

Bill Kleyman:

Right. Drop them off a four story building on the concrete, they’re fine. If you find it right now, and turn it on, it probably still has 90% battery. But do you know what we used to use those things for in 2000? Phone calls. We use to actually make phone calls with these devices? And if you fast forward to 2019, these very same phones, 92% of what we do with this stuff is everything other than making phone calls.

You’re talking about how far we’ve come with technology, this connected state that we live in. I mean, you’re absolutely right, we need to change the messaging that we’ve got to young people in terms of technology, how it’s being used, and obviously the old legacy language around, “Hey, get into tech.” Is the same stuff that we’ve used at the turn of the 2000, the century. It’s not going to fly anymore.

You ask somebody, “What do you think is going to happen over the course of the next five, 10 years?” It’s almost an impossible prediction at this point, but you can see just how much has changed. Listen to put it in perspective, the iPhone came out in 2007. So there you go, crazy.

Steve Sidwell:

No, I know it’s hard to wrap your head around the growth we’ve made in technology, for sure. I just want to circle back, talk about your experiences, and what you’ve been doing, obviously. When you look at your profile on LinkedIn, you’re a bit of a technology Renaissance man, you’re an analysts, board members, speaker, blogger, podcaster. Obviously, other than working at Switch, what is it that you enjoy doing most?

Bill Kleyman:

You know what? If I said sleep, you guys would laugh at me. You’d be like, “You don’t sleep clearly.” There’s a lot of stuff that I get a chance to do, and it really does focus around one core driving factor that I really enjoy. And that’s teaching. Educating the industry and the market. If you’ve ever read what I’ve done, and seen me present on a keynote stage, or a breakout session, whatever. It’s always about that aha moment. The teaching, getting people excited around technology, and understanding use cases behind.

 It’s no longer just like a myth, a word, a marketing term. And as guilty as I am in using these marketing terminologies all the time, cloud, edge, cognitive systems, what I love to do is pause there, let people roll their eyes, and actually say, “But here’s what it does. Here’s how you interact with it every single day. Here’s how it’s going to change your life in the future.” I wouldn’t say that I have one favorite thing that I do amongst all this stuff, but they all have one thing in common, and that’s to educate the industry, get people inspired to do great things with technology, build a foundation for a sustainable digital future. And honestly, get more people to do great things with technology. That’s the biggest driving factor around all of this.

And what’s really been successful, and if anybody’s listening to this, and if you’re a young person, it doesn’t matter. If you are passionate, if you have a good visibility in technology, you should absolutely try and educate others. Now here’s the one other thing, I’m also a technologist. I’m always going to be a technologist. I’ve got my own little data center, I’ve got a half height rack, I’ve got Cisco gear, and Muraki ecosystem all over the place. I’ve got my own private cloud. I don’t want to let go of that actual technology aspect that I get a chance to play with all the time, and then share that knowledge.

So, as much as I am a Renaissance man, I feel like all of these things, I’m most of all, a technology educator, to get people just as excited, without the caffeine that I have to take every day about technology, certainly the data center, and this digital future that we live in. A lot of stuff that I do, but beyond anything else, I love getting people inspired, excited by educating them.

Steve Sidwell:

Yeah, you sound like a technology evangelist, quite frankly. Getting people exited about [crosstalk 00:17:46].

Bill Kleyman:

There you go. It’s not a bad thing.

Leading Data Center Solutions

Steve Sidwell:

You’re currently working as the Executive Vice President of Digital Solutions at Switch. Tell us about your day to day there, and who are the end users you support?

Bill Kleyman:

It’s a really just an amazing opportunity, and an amazing job with probably one of the best companies, technology companies on the planet. As you’re listening to this, and this is why I know that everyone out here is multitasking and millennials. You’re more than welcome to pop the name into Google, just so you can read, or you know what? Your search engine of choice, let’s say that. So you can read a little bit more about Switch and what we do.

But my day to day has two hats. One on the technology side, I work very closely with developing cloud strategies, working on the technology side in terms of the things that we host, working with customers to make sure that they’re developing and delivering the right kinds of technology solutions around density, around workloads, around connectivity for example, are they working with latency sensitive edge solutions, or are we working with more traditional processing engines?

And then you nailed it. I’m also the evangelist. I’m also the guy that works with our branding and marketing team. And I get a chance to continue to write and speak at major industry events. So two hats, one definitely deep on the technology side, and one helping get the wonderful message of who we are at Switch out to the rest of the industry.

Steve Sidwell:

That’s amazing. And I mean, obviously Switch, anybody in data center space, knows who they are. And Greenpeace recently scored Switch as the highest overall in it’s clean company scorecard. I was just curious, what are the things that really make Switch stand out as a company?

Bill Kleyman:

What a proud moment. And I was looking at that, and that’s really one of the biggest reasons why I came to this organization, is because the company is built on karma. And even the logo, if you take a look at our arrows, that’s what it is, karma, do good for the world, and the world will do good for you. And we genuinely believe, and we genuinely execute every single day in our business in that mentality. I shouldn’t even say the word belief. It’s our DNA, and that’s the core of our culture, is being a good karmic resident of this world. It sounds so far out, but it’s really true.

 What sets this company apart from anybody else in the data center industry, and I really want to make that clear, is the dedication to innovate, and the dedication towards perfection in terms of how we work with customers in the data center space, but beyond anything else, it’s seeing this technology ecosystem that we work with every single day, fundamentally differently. That’s a big reason why led by our founder and president, Rob Roy, we have more than 500 patents. We look at data center technologies, and we immediately think, hang on a second. This isn’t a commodity. How can we make this better? How can we improve resiliency? How do we continue this 100% uptime that we’ve had for the past 18 years? How do we continue to support 100% renewable energy for all of our locations? How do we continue to support massive hyper scale customers, as well as people who have maybe just half a rack, and make them feel the same way?

 What makes this company stand out above and beyond anybody else, aside from the fact that we’re working on some truly amazing projects, maybe we’ll talk about it a little bit later, in the world of cloud, smart cities, edge computing, and certainly cognitive systems, it’s the time and energy that we put into our unique and patented designs to make our ecosystem a true technology ecosystem. There’s fun facts and figures out there. Largest data center ecosystem in the world, a hundred percent renewable energy, like I said, a hundred percent uptime. That’s really cool, and numbers speak for themselves, but it’s the culture, it is the people. And it’s how we get our own customers excited around working with these kinds of technology platforms that makes us stand out beyond anybody else.

And this is a big reason why I came here as well. I’ve known the industry. I’ve spoken with a lot of amazing other data center, real estate, investment trusts, data center partners, and this company. It does things differently. It does things to support that digital foundation. And I think it’s going to continue to stand out for many, many years to come.

Logic-Based Data Center Design

Steve Sidwell:

Tell me more about, what is this patented design, what goes into that? When you’re talking about like Switch is, two big things are innovation and perfection. And to me, perfection is, straight up my alley, quality management from quality management systems, all that kind of stuff. Tell me more about the innovation side. And of course, then I do want to hear about the perfection side, and I want to know more about patented design.

Bill Kleyman:

Absolutely. For example, the way we work with our [inaudible 00:22:26], and the way we design our actual data center environment, we want to use a lot of logic. We design an air flow system that, hang on a second, uses physics to our advantage as far as letting the hot air rise, and letting the cool air flow throughout the aisle. We’ve designed a weight to allow this kind of ecosystem to flow through the actual cabinets, and up through the ceiling and out, through our own unique custom pattern, airflow and conditioning systems.

Here’s another one. If you ever take a look, I’m just going to give you a one simple example, the Switch Shield, it’s really cool. You can pop it into your search engine, and check it out right now. But we’ve got our own roofing architecture that can sustain up to 200 mile an hour winds. That’s pretty insane. And you will never ever experience a leak into your data center. This is something that maybe somebody will think is trivial, but in reality, it’s pretty cool. Not just one roof, but actually two secondary dome roof that can create other additional protection levels.

There’s other ones as well. For example, creating fans that even in a power outage, will continue to spin and make sure that your environment is cool, even if there’s no energy, using our own proprietary system. And again, all of this stuff is available by the way. We’re not keeping it a secret. You’re more than welcome to go on our website, check out our patents, check out some of the things that we’re doing around design. Now, if I were to sit here and rattle off all of these patent pending that we go through, this would be a very, very long podcast, but obviously you’re welcome to review those with our own teams, but that’s where the innovation comes in.

We look at a design, and we understand what can we improve? Where is it good already potentially, and how can it impact our customers sort of in the future and moving forward? Then this is a big reason why we’ve been able to maintain a hundred percent uptime for the past 18 years. Again, if nothing’s ever gone down, and it’s again, a architecture around sustainability, and architecture around connectivity, and an architecture around creating the most resilient systems out there, and then really putting all of that together. I mean, and then coupled with obviously the connectivity element.

 We have own $6.7 trillion buying cooperative for connections and carrier neutrality that’s coming into our data centers. So you have this ability to leverage the most powerful, fastest connections, all going through a data center ecosystem. It’s very, very long winded, but we take pride in how we design our data centers, and how we design our technology ecosystems. I know I use the word data centers, we’re going to continue to do that, but it really is a technology ecosystem. And a lot of the pride and effort that we put into our own proprietary design. So hopefully, that gives you a bit of a perspective, but again, I couldn’t recommend this enough by all means, just check out Switch, and our patents to really see some of the really cool things that we’ve made out there that nobody else in the industry has.

Steve Sidwell:

To me, that’s so cool because it’s not only is it a dedication to the company and everything that goes with it, which is no small fee. I feel like everybody has to be dedicated to their company, but it’s also dedication to the industry, and trying to forward the industry as a whole. And then giving away the stuff that you develop. I mean, I feel like so many of the guys who I respect the most across various industries are really, the single thing that ties them all together is trying to come up with new and better ways of doing things, and then giving them away, and trying to educate people on how to do it, the way that you figured out is better. Show them why it’s better, and then just keep moving on, because otherwise, you’re just like an old man trying to hold on to this dream of the past. There’s no future in that.

Bill Kleyman:

Oh my God, complacency-

Steve Sidwell:

And our one goal here is to further mankind, and just the universe in which we live, and in which we operate.

Bill Kleyman:

I love that. Everything you said, I’m nodding here. And I apologize for jumping in. I think complacency is absolutely the worst thing you could ever do in the technology field. The second you start feeling comfortable, is the second you should start asking yourself, “Why am I feeling comfortable?” A part of a digital disruption, or digital strategy is, in order to disrupt the market, you yourself need to be disrupted. Not the scariest thing you could possibly say to an executive or anybody out there, but it’s something that needs to happen.

Even if you’re doing some kind of a solution day, that quote unquote works, I know you can’t see my air quotes. It doesn’t mean it’s actually bringing you value, or a positive user experience. Absolutely, this would be something that I would recommend. Don’t get complacent. The second you start feeling comfy in your job, is the second you should start learning something new.

Steve Sidwell:

That’s when you start realizing like, wait a minute, what was it that I used to do that I stopped doing?

Bill Kleyman:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). Absolutely.

Steve Sidwell:

And it’s generally change.

Bill Kleyman:

The scariest thing you can imagine out there, next to public speaking.

Steve Sidwell:

Bill, you talked about obviously all the patents that you have, a hundred percent uptime, a hundred percent renewable energy. I’m sure a lot of effort, time was put into making all that happen. What’s the most exciting project that you yourself has worked on, or that you plan on working on in the near future?

Bill Kleyman:

Wow. You know what the challenge is about answering that question is that I can’t name names. I wish I could just rattle off all the fun things that I’m doing, but I can’t, but I can say, keep an eye on the press releases because you will see it soon enough. Part of the fun, and or challenges of working with a publicly traded organization. But I will give you guys some perspective. Some of the really cool things that we’re working on revolve around a couple different things, first of all, and I can’t get too much into this, but edge. And not just any kind of edge ecosystem, but literally to create smart cities, light up intersections, create smarter airports, create an environment that allows for the say sustainability and connectivity of an entire city, block building, whatever the case might be.

But here’s the thing, pan out. We’re not just, here’s a piece of infrastructure that’s connected to some here or telecom site, good luck to you. We take edge completely differently in the sense that we understand, this is not just like a secondary ecosystem, and pan out, everyone listening to this, if you think edge is just some kind of closet or something you’re going to put to the side, you need to rethink your edge strategy, because if you lose an edge component, or an edge data center, or whatever the case might be, you’re going to potentially seriously impact your workloads, applications, and user performance.

We live in a world where slow is the new down. So anything that experiences additional amounts of latency, push for someone who’s like a millennial, I’m closing my laptop, and I’m going to Starbucks where I’m going to get myself a coffee, not that I need any more caffeine, but that’s the challenge that we live in today, is that you just can’t lose these kinds of platforms. So, we at Switch, are designing edge ecosystem that have our resiliency, that have our unique patented designs built into these much smaller pod like containers that can be deployed and delivered anywhere.

 One of the fun projects I’m working on is edge lighting up some really, really cool cities, and some other kinds of fun government led projects. The other one I’m going to talk about really briefly is cloud. And not just connecting into cloud, not just doing like a VPN, or a direct connection to the cloud, what we’re doing this something very, very special. These are going to be several major cloud providers, content cloud, content providers, and actually public cloud providers as well, that are going to be living literally within the data center walls of Switch.

And this is something so special, a sub millisecond latency cloud ecosystem. So literally, a customer can have their physical workload in a data center and say, “I need to leverage that public cloud provider.” There’s no VPN, no direct connectivity. Literally the cloud is right there. The actual cloud services. This is revolutionary, this is so exciting, and this is a completely new way to build out a hybrid. Most of our multi-cloud ecosystem without even actually move any of your platforms. So that’s another really, really fun one thing, a project that we’re working on. I can’t name names, but keep an eye on those press releases because you’re going to hear a lot more about this.

Emerging Data Center Markets

Steve Sidwell:

That’s awesome. We will. So Bill, we’ve seen a lot of areas really grow in the data center space recently, Las Vegas, Northern Virginia, Dublin, Amsterdam. They become huge data center markets. And that might be because of alternative power sources, or shifts in commerce. Where do you think we might start seeing new emerging data center locations throughout the world, and why?

Bill Kleyman:

That’s a really great thought to start approaching. I was at AFCOM Data Center World, and I was pulled aside by a professor from Tulane, and she’s actually teaching data center design, architecture, construction, for example. And she asked me basically this question, “But why are people building a data center in the middle of Louisiana, or like Alabama, or somewhere along those lines?” And the answer was simple. It’s not just about real estate. It’s about connectivity. It’s about access roads, airports. It’s about power utilities, multiple carriers. You don’t just want to create a single point of failure. You want to have a data center that’s built around redundancy.

So to answer that question specifically, we are going to see a continued explosion of data center, ecosystems, let’s call them. And I’m going to funnel in things like edge into this environment as well. There’s been some projects in my past that I worked on that involves telehealth and telemedicine, where you can bring these life saving, life changing services to users that are sitting hundreds of miles away from a primary data center where a doctor using 720 or 1080P video, can check for x-rays, can check on results, can actually talk to the person. Cameras could be, you can look down into somebody’s mouth or ear for example, the doctor gets a live feed.

Now, any of that would not be possible without a good content distribution to ecosystem, or a platform that can support this level of latency sensitive connectivity. So the future is going to revolve more around data centers being built strategically, and hubs to create regions and zones. But certainly, if you just don’t need massive environments, you’re going to see smaller ecosystems like edge that are going to be doing some initial processing of data, some cleaning of it, maybe hosting some very important latency driven applications or workloads that need to be close to the source.

But beyond anything else, it’s good to be in the data center business you guys, I mean, it’s a big reason why we’re continuing to see this boom, and onstage, everybody listening, on stage in front of a few thousand people, I got the question of, “Bill, do you think cloud is going to kill the data center?” And I almost kicked the podium over, because that question gets asked too much. I responded in front of everybody, “No, the cloud is not here to kill the data center. Don’t ask that question anymore. The cloud is a direct compliment of the data center.”

Organizations are realizing that the centralized, all of this data, all of these workloads in one cloud, or even multiple clouds, it’s not effective. And it can get really, really costly, especially if you’re doing things like data-driven analytics, you need to do things like processing at the edge. Some of this stuff just takes too long to get there and back. So you have to deploy more workloads. So clouds can get pricey and sometimes complicated. This is why this is like cloud. And this is why cloud is being used as a much more of a tool around things like IoT, around processing, working with new kinds of dev ops things, and workloads. But beyond anything else, it’s going to be a lot more deployments around vocalized data processing. So obviously, data centers, smaller data center environments all over the world.

And as connectivity, and as utilities, and as we get more curious in certain regions and locations, those spots are going to see more potential data centers being built out as well. Look at all these new fun emerging markets. Nevada is one of them, Arizona is another, obviously Northern Virginia. We’re seeing continuous build-outs. If it wasn’t anything else, you’d see more around cloud. That’s certainly not the case. I think the data centers is very, very healthy, especially some of those secondary and tertiary systems, they’re going to be deployed.

As far as locations are concerned. You’re still asking the question of what other utilities, are there access roads, is their tax deferment for example? A lot of things have to go into the question before you break any ground in any location. But I do think it’s good to be in the data center business, it’s going to continue to grow.

Steve Sidwell:

So, the physical data center, that’s like, “Where do I want to put my company’s headquarters, where do I want to put the manufacturing, where do I want to put the warehousing, and the distribution, all the rest.” But on the other part of it, the other part of what you were just talking about, is cloud going to kill the data center? You know where cloud live. I mean, didn’t live in data centers last time I checked, and it’s not just in a library, it actually needs data centers. But the kind of a generalization, at the end of the day, if you’ve got a cloud, and you’ve got data centers, data centers feed that cloud, and that cloud feeds data centers. And without that, in the same way, I mean, you can just take the metaphor all the way back to lakes and rivers and streams. Without all that stuff, there is no cloud because at that point in time, you’re really going back to 1970. And we’re just all sitting here on external.

Bill Kleyman:

I’m laughing because you are so, so correct in that concept. You know what? Google and Amazon and Facebook have done a really good job. They’ve positioned themselves as services, applications, windows, workloads, whatever, technology companies that happen to own really big data centers. You guys, their data center companies. Let’s not beat around the Bush. They own really massive and really cool data centers, but that’s not how they position themselves. They’re technology companies. I think the future with those that are going to be able to lead in this industry, not just provide another commodity service. They’re going to be technology driven organizations.

Listen, Switch falls into that category, and I’m proud to say that. We’re a technology company that happens to own some of the world’s best data centers, but that’s how we’re seen. We provide technology solutions, business services, and we happen to own some amazing, amazing architectural and infrastructure technologies. Those are the kinds of folks that are going to be able to differentiate themselves in the future. It’s going to be the people that say, “Right, data centers are important. Here’s why they’re unique. Here’s why they’re different, but beyond anything else, it’s a technology ecosystem.” So, I agree with you a hundred percent.

Steve Sidwell:

Right. Because it’s not just about theater. It’s about all the things that you can do with that, and all the places where you can go. And from there, there’s just so much more possibility, once you’re able to work with somebody who understands that, and is on the same page and excited to move forward.

Bill Kleyman:

Agreed, a hundred percent.

Steve Sidwell:

I feel like that’s, when we were talking earlier about education, that’s so much a part of it is to me is educating actual kids, but then also changing the way that we do education, because in the same way that marketing has changed, education is changing too. We just markets straight from billboards and roll calls, and whatever, and TV ads. I mean, if you’re not marketing on Instagram, you’re probably wicked out a date, and I’m so out of date with it, I couldn’t even tell you what’s taking over for that now.

Millennials in the Data Center Industry

Bill Kleyman:

You bring up some really good points. And I just got named to the iMason, Infrastructure Masons Advisory Council, and I’m a hundred percent sure I’m the only millennial on the advisory council. We do have some other young people in the group, in the organization in general. We did the global summit meeting recently in California, and myself, and six or seven other young millennials were asked to go up in the front of the group onstage, this is completely impromptu. And leaders is data center space, listen you guys, these are people who own and operate, and are the founders of the biggest data centers in the world in our country, period.

They started asking this question, “How did you get into this? What did you hear about it? Were you adopted into this field? What can we do to entice you? How do we work with you guys?” And there are so many misconceptions around millennials. As a part of that event, there was another speaker. Her name is Dr. Julie Albright, and she’s a lecturer at USC. She wrote a really fun book called Left to Their Own Devices. As far as looking at millennials or connected society, and a lot of times there’s these misconceptions that we are entitled, that we feel like it’s a right to work from home. And a lot of times people don’t ask the question of, “Well, are you more productive when you work from home? Are you able to do all the things that you require?”

We’ve got these nomadic millennials. If you take a look at Facebook or other kinds of large employers or employers of young people, they’re living in like vans, they’re living in these different kinds of a mobile living unit. It’s a completely different kind of generation that you need a different type of voice to get their attention. I agree with you know, no robocalls, no billboards. Yeah, you got to be sending out DMs, posting your stuff on IG, and getting the word out on Twitter and Snapchat, and all these other really fun and different ways of communicating via social media.

In that session, we learned quickly that there’s a generational gap and misunderstanding of how to motivate and get young people into the data center, and what needs to be done to overcome that? I don’t think the world is on fire, I don’t think data centers are going to run dry without talent. And I absolutely, I’m confident that I think the leaders of our industry, and I’m talking about the biggest data center operators in the world are seeing this challenge, and are starting to apply a different way of thinking to get young people more involved in data center operations.

 And let me just make something clear. It’s not just somebody who’s in the data center, who’s checking lines and links. This is construction as well. Let’s talk about STEM or STEM. There’s a couple of different acronyms, ways you can spell this, but science technology just is math as a part of it, construction of a data center is different than it used to be. You have to worry about density, you have to worry about your utilities, who you’re going to be working with as the business aspect to it. So, a young person could very well need to be a expert in building out data center environments with designs around things like density and connectivity, and all these other kinds of variables that are much more evolved than what we used to work with. So it’s getting them excited around that full spectrum of working in technology.

Steve Sidwell:

Bill, other than following you obviously on LinkedIn and Twitter, what are some of the resources that young people can follow and look to, to get excited about the industry?

Bill Kleyman:

I always recommend finding a friend on Twitter, and you guys listen, you’re more than welcome to find me out there. I’m sure my information’s available on this podcast, or right below as you’re reading this, you can follow me, my Twitter handles QuadStack. But there’s a lot of really great folks out there that talk about cloud. There’s a lot of really good publications. I write for Information Week, and Network Computing, and Dark Reading. I write for Data Center Knowledge, as well as Data Center Frontier.

These are great resources that explain really complex topics in ways that you can grasp or better understand them. And here’s the thing, where you find voices that are young, you will also find voice that will tell your story. Where are your concern, what are you looking at? What the set positions are potentially most interesting. Let me give you an example. Right now for Data Center Knowledge, I’m writing a series of articles. You just saw one, but the next one might be, “Okay, so you want to become a data center engineers. Here’s what you need. Here’s what you need to get started. Here’s the people that you talk to, here’s how you actually do this. Okay. So you want to be a network administrator working in a data center. Here’s what you need to know.”

We don’t have that as much, or like a central repository where people can just pick a job concept and really better understand it. Really long winded answer. If you’re listening to this, and you’re young, you probably know how to use hashtags, but just find the trending topics that are most interesting to you. Everything from hashtag game development, to hashtag data center design. You will find really good resources out there. At the very least, listen to the podcast, reach out to the good folks out here as though you’re talking to right now. And personally, I know I’d be more than happy to guide you, to talk at least to the right people, but there’s some really, really cool resources out there.

Steve Sidwell:

That was awesome. Thank you so much. I feel like we’ve learned so much in this talk today. I know I certainly have. I always enjoy talking about education, and pretty much anything to do with that. And with construction management, with technology, and just how to get people more interested in finding all the little steps, and getting excited about things, and making something their own that they never even knew existed before this morning. And then in the evening, they’re telling their parents about it as if they’ve been studying it for a year. And how could you guys not know about this?

Bill Kleyman:

Yeah, absolutely. Agreed.

Steve Sidwell:

James, I know you had one more question on your list.

James Patrignelli:

I did. I want to end with something fun Bill, and I know last time we talked, you talked about some superheroes.

Bill Kleyman:

Oh boy.

James Patrignelli:

And I figured I’d ask you. If you had your choice to elect any super hero to be our next president, who would it be and why?

Bill Kleyman:

Whoa, Whoa. You saved the hardest question I could imagine for the very last. I think this question deserves a tiny bit of context. I am a Marvel and superhero junkie. I know this is a podcast, but hey guys, next time we’ll do a video cast, and you’ll see that my office it’s literally lined with original prints, and a assigned comic book covers of my favorite Marvel characters. Who do I think is, it’s going to be impossible to pick one person.

Obviously, the top of my list would be Captain America, but listen, he actually did this in a comic book, and it didn’t end too well for him. So, I’m not going to spoil it for you if you didn’t read this comic yet, so I’ll let you do it. Who else can you pick? Superman? Right. He does two terns, and then which other mortal could you possibly fill those shoes after Superman leaves office? There’s a couple of people that I think are going to be at the top of my list. I still think Cap is pretty good. I am a huge, huge Tony Stark fun, I’m just worried that he might be a little excentric, and something crazy while in the office.

You know what? Pepper Potts. If you saw the latest Avenger movie, I promise, I won’t say anything to spoil it. You’ll know that she’s a hero, and awesome, plus guess what Pepper Potts did? Ran the entire Stark organization while Tony was having his coming to terms moments and realizing what his value in life is. You know what? I’m going to throw you guys curve ball. Pepper Potts for president.

James Patrignelli:

Pepper Potts, 2020.

Steve Sidwell:

There you go.

Bill Kleyman:

That’s it.

Steve Sidwell:

I love it. All right, Bill, thank you so much for coming on the Tech Bench Podcast today. It’s great talking with you. We really enjoyed it, and we really appreciate your time.

James Patrignelli:

Thank you Bill, really appreciate it.

Bill Kleyman:

Thank you guys. Thank you for what you do. It’s an amazing industry out there. Always stay exited, stay inspired, and stay motivated, do great things. Thank you guys.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for joining us for another episode for the Tech Bench podcast. On our next episode, we’ll be speaking to Yagnesh Ashara, the Director of Enterprise Solutions at Supermicro.

Speaker 5:

If yo enjoyed this episode, please make sure to subscribe and follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook at LTTB Podcast. If you have any comments, questions, or show ideas, please feel free to email us at techbench@liqiudtechnology.net. For show notes, visit liquidtechnology.net/techbench.

Bill Kleyman:

You guy, that was so much fun.

Steve Sidwell:

That was awesome [crosstalk 00:47:23].

Speaker 6:

Loved your last answer.

Steve Sidwell:

I had no idea where James was going with that, and then come to find out. That’s really cool. Now next time, we have to figure out who’s going to be the VP.

James Patrignelli:

Yeah.

Bill Kleyman:

Yeah. You know what? I don’t know. That guy is a good sidekick.