 Welcome to JSA TV and JSA podcast, the newsroom for telecom and data center professionals. I'm Laura Nolan and joining me today is Greg Elliott, Vice President of Business Development at 1623 Farnham leading up to PTC 22. Greg, welcome back to JSA TV. Thanks for having me again, Laura. It's great to be here. Well, 2021 was a huge year for connectivity. Tell us a little bit about what 1623's year looked like in terms of keeping up with that demand. And as we lead up to PTC, what milestones are you most excited to share? Yes, 2021 was another crazy year as it applies to connectivity and new fiber builds. Now some of the things that we saw at 1623 that were super exciting. Tell you had their new long haul fiber build from Chicago through Des Moines through us and Omaha and then on to Denver and beyond. So that was huge. That's a great accomplishment in creating a lot of activity. And then everything from 5G to fiber the home builds to all the hyperscaler activity and Council Bluffs, Iowa and Omaha, that's just creating a ton of things. And then on top of that, you have the COVID effect, the work from home and existing carriers trying to figure out where they need to move capacity. So that created more and more need for connectivity. So it's all from a fiber perspective that's been incredible. And then in the meteor room, our ecosystem in the meteor room has grown leaps and bounds, everything from new content providers to new ISPs, exciting to announce that new carriers and extra carriers like subspace have just added to the meteor room as well as packet fabric. So going into 2022, it's continuing to build that ecosystem. So it's been great. Well, in addition to the success in 2021 for 1623, your facility also completed a major upgrade this past year. So what new advantages does this deliver to clients? Yeah, so that definitely was a huge undertaking, two years and $40 million in new power infrastructure, cooling infrastructure, all the while having existing data center customers up and active. So we're definitely happy to see that in the river near and I'm excited to have essentially a brand new building with new infrastructure. And with a new power infrastructure, it certainly creates efficiencies. And as we continue to load the building, we'll see better efficiencies for us and for our customers. And then with some of the new cooling infrastructure, we actually, there's a free cooling involved in it. And so being in Nebraska, we've been able to take advantage of that free cooling as of late. So those are a couple of different ways we will be more efficient moving forward. And then we added new diverse fiber vaults to the building. And so we're already seeing those to become filled with fiber, plenty of capacity, but it's good to see those being filled up as well. 1623's Edge Data Center is a major nexus of connectivity strategically located, as you mentioned in Nebraska in the center of the US. So as the experts on this topic, if you could give one piece of advice for businesses looking to build the ideal and most advanced connectivity fabric, what would that be? That's gonna be hard to do in just one. I will try to narrow it down to three maybe, let's say. So the interesting, what's always been interesting to me in the carrier hotel and the interconnected edge spaces, edge data center spaces that you can look at the ecosystem and grow that ecosystem. And so as over the years, I look at it from a customer point of view. And so, I asked what would be good for my customer's business and as they scale and grow and pivot as needed. And so with a facility like ours, you have 50 carriers and ISPs within the meet me room, you have content providers, you have, now you have these next-gen carriers like Megaport and packet fabric and all the cool cloud on ramps that the customers can connect into and the internet exchange. So as I always tell the customer to look at the ecosystem and how maybe you haven't seen things that come up but to have that scalability, flexibility with just a cross-connect or setting up a VPN quickly is super powerful for our customers. And then I always tell people to look at the ownership of the building. So as 1623, we're super fortunate to have a great ownership group in the Bradley family and long-term holders and anything we need and super customer friendly. And then our operations team is unbelievable too. We get like a weekly, we get compliments on how the operations team has gone above and beyond to help our customers. So just super fun to be a part of that type of ecosystem. And then third, you mentioned it before, location, location, location. As we see different workloads evolving and latencies come into play, it's just really important to look at routes, latency routes and where the data center sits within that geographic and where your business is trying to accomplish. So sorry, I didn't get it done at one, but a lot to add there. I'll let it slide this time, Greg. That was great information, great information. Well, and Greg, as you know, so many technologies like augmented and virtual reality, 5G, cloud, gaming and more, they're all redefining IT and digital business as we know it. So does this mean that being at the edge is more critical than ever? Yeah, yeah. So the edge definitely is pushing closer and closer to the end user. And the interesting thing is the edges is different, defined differently by different people. So it depends on what you're trying to accomplish. Everything from 5G cars can be an edge to you see edge moving closer into factories and warehouses and 5G applications and healthcare, virtuality and augmented reality. And so, yes, the edge is pushing closer and closer to the end user or whatever that may be. The good news is that care hotels and interconnected facilities are definitely an extreme part of making all that work. And we're fortunate that people and machines keep creating more and more data every second. So definitely job security for years and years to come for all of us in this industry. So we're fortunate to be here and it's exciting to see the edge of all. Greg, we've talked a lot about the success of 2021 and even before that. So lots of momentum happening at 1623. Can you give us some hints about what's on the horizon? What's next for 1623? Yeah, just continuing to grow that ecosystem, new carriers from rural, just regional carriers to international carriers, new content providers, new applications, new cloud on ramps. So all those things are gonna be happening in 2022 and beyond and then adding to the Omaha IX continues to grow rapidly. And then the last thing I'll add is pre COVID we used to do an event called Meet in the Middle. It's a really great industry event where people would come in from all over from telecom and data center to just meet. We have a golf tournament, scavenger hunt, networking events, and we're actually gonna bring it back this year. So September 21st, 22nd, we'll be hosting that. Everybody's invited. It'll be a great party. So keep your eyes open for that and we'll keep you posted. That sounds like a lot of fun, a great time. Okay, market calendars. In the meantime, Greg, lots of news looks like we'll be coming out of 1623 in the near future. So where can our viewers go to learn more? Yeah, anytime you reach out to me via email or phone or you can go to our website, 1623fartem.com and reach out there as well. So thank you very much. Alrighty, sounds great. Always a pleasure. Thanks for joining us, Greg. Thanks, Laura. And thank you viewers for tuning in to JSA TV and JSA Podcast. Happy networking.