 Welcome to JSA TV and JSA Podcasts, the newsroom for telecom and medicine professionals. I'm Joe March Lim and joining me today is Philip Marangela, Chief Marketing Officer at Edge Connects and Lee Kirby, Chairman and Co-Founder of Salute Mission Critical. Philip and Lee, thanks so much for joining us. We spoke earlier this year. We had very interesting chats with both of you, especially about Edge Connects and also with Salute is doing, such throughout the COVID crisis. A lot has really changed across both businesses. I mean, give us a quick overview of what's been happening over the last five months. Maybe Philip, would you like to go ahead? And I think India is probably one of the biggest things that has happened as well. Yeah, sure. Well, first off, great to see you again, Joe, and good to be on with you again, Lee. Of course, you're in a much nicer confines out in the Pacific Northwest. So love the love the real backdrop that you have there. Look, as you said, Joe, it's been a busy year. Certainly. We announced our joint venture in India with the Adani group. So informed Adani connects to build out kind of a national platform of data centers. Sustainable as well, leveraging Adani's fantastic kind of solar and green energy platform to support those facilities. Just a few weeks ago, we did an acquisition in Israel. And so, you know, adding another dot on the map there. Barcelona. And then a myriad of expansions and a lot of markets where we already are in South America and in Europe and obviously North America and we look to continue that right so stay tuned. Thanks. We have much more expansions coming down the pipe as well so all driven by kind of our customers and their need to go push their edge further further field globally. And so it's certainly been a wild past 12 months. We've had a lot of milestones and Lee, I mean you are going to by a virtual background, not virtual by a real background which I thought was virtual into very late in the call. But you've you've been equally very busy as well since we last spoke and things have changed a lot. As the crisis progressed as well so tell us a little bit about what salute has been up to in the last five, six months. Thanks for having me on it's always fun but it like Philip said it's been very busy we've opened up our operations in Poland and the expansion seems to be the theme of the game. This industry is growing at a rate that I, I didn't think was sustainable but that was 10 years ago, and I think it's got another 10 to 20 years at this rate and looking at the expansion of the sites that we currently manage as well as new sites and we are in different countries. It's just exciting all over the board to help us with that growth. You probably saw the announcement a few months ago we brought on a capital partner and we're really stoked with that because LLR has a reputation and a track record of helping take companies from where we're at to where we want to be. Because while we brag about having over 500 employees now we'd actually like to move that decimal because we think the social impact we can have with that is monumental. And our veterans program continues to be strong, bringing in military spouses as well as other underrepresented groups because of a strong workforce development program and that program has proven very effective and we release the template for that to the industry so if there's people out there that want to do what Salute did with data center technicians they can do it with cyber technologists or any of the various swim lanes that get you into this industry and we're encouraging and working with other companies that want to use that model. I was just going to add to what Lee was saying right he mentioned Warsaw. That's that's a new market for us where we're expanding greatly so obviously leveraging Salute there. But again Salute is global right it's military veterans from from all all countries around the world the framework that he established to help veterans, you know migrate from the military into the commercial sector is fantastic and it can be applied anywhere and so we leverage them in South America. In Europe we have close to 100 salute people supporting our facilities across the region, and then obviously North America but as we scale out, you know, you know, it's kind of hand in hand both of our growth and their key to help us have that kind of operational consistency that we have established in our other data centers around the world so that's why we have this kind of great symbiotic partnership to you. Yeah, I've seen a more productive partnership in my whole career and we've expanded and I think we've brought value to each other that's just incredible I there'll be a case study at HBR about this Sunday. You know when it's out but I mean I said it last time and I'll say it again I mean what you've been doing with veterans and all the other work that you're doing is what it's very important. And you two are mirroring what's happening in the market. And even when the interview came out last time I did have some interesting reactions from people are not in the data center space. I'm asking why is this how is this working so kind of be like how can we kind of transfer this model to other industries other verticals in the world, other than just digital infrastructure so it's very very important what you're doing but I mean, carrying on with the focus on people because it's something that sometimes gets a bit overlooked outside of our expansion conversations acquisitions and capital investments. There's a lot going on in diversity inclusion inclusion movement inclusion front, especially you guys as well as edge connects Philip. Tell us about the the customers people and planet mission that you've just launched. I mean, you know this this comes from our CEO and and he says look it's simple. You focus on three things our customers and giving them what they want where they want when they want and making sure they're always satisfied with, you know, the best data center services possible and our people right I mean you know like you said we always talk about technologies and and you know various widgets and cooling and this that and the other right. Absolutely that's important. But the most important assets are the people that are running it operating and making it happen right and so you got to take care of your people. You hire the best people and you take care of them. And then obviously the planet right that's that's table stakes and you know data center, you know industry is is quite good overall to self regulate and we're always, and we collaborate really to try to, you know, I think we're quite efficient as as much as we can be as possible, but we're always looking ways to improve and how to be greener not just from a pe perspective but from a water perspective, and as well as from a people perspective if you look at the UN sustainability index it's something that we model ourselves upon and benchmark. But if you take care of those three things, you know our CEOs like hey everything else will take care of itself. So it ties into what we're doing with salute right it's the right thing that that we're doing and it's it's a great way to kind of not only solve for the problem of having, you know, talented and skill people to operate these data centers. But then you know it's it's great to give them a kind of a second career. And it's just a great anecdote right there's another initiative that you know I've started with the infrastructure masons called the capstone program. You know this industry is is is getting old, like Lee and myself, we're getting long in the tooth and. But it's also a predominantly male white male staffed industry. And so we're trying to help correct that right and want a great way to get the young, the next generation of people into the space. Look, there isn't a degree that you can get in data centers right I don't you don't can't get an undergraduate and data center, you know infrastructure. And so we found a way to create a capstone program it's a senior project it's usually a year long or semester long project. And we focused on the HBC use now in the US that stands for historically black colleges and universities. And there's a consortium it's called the inclusive engineering consortium. It's like a super department of engineers across 18 different HBC us and we started last year with Hampton University. We expanded it to four other universities, where we, we take these young students senior students, and they do everything from site selection to design, trying to figure out, you know, where to build a center data center how many and so forth. So when they're done, they actually have the practical experience I think it's like a year long apprenticeship or internship. So we hired two last year right as engineers here at edge connects and and so we really looked to scale that out. And it was a collaborative effort that's what's the great thing about I Mason's and I'm sorry I'm spending so much time on this but it's, it's I'm so passionate and excited about it is because the I Mason's has like everybody in the data center systems involves and everybody wants to take part and help and share their specific expertise and so forth, and recruit the students that go through this process and so, you know, I'm really proud of what we started and and the potential of where this can go. And, you know, go in full circle we talk about India. Same thing right as we scale this out globally in countries and markets like India or other emerging markets in Africa and so forth. You want to recruit local students local workforce from those countries and not try to import them from afar so it's it's it's definitely customer people and planet. That's what's exciting these next five years you're going to see programs like what Philip and them are doing and what salute is doing start to really scale globally and start to have the impact outside of the US and noticeable impact and we're doing that and when you set up the programs like that to be able to get them trained up and familiarize. They can make a choice if they want a career in our industry but we can make a choice to which ones will want to select from that program. It's been a great feeder system. No, I mean it's been a very interesting change over the last five years to see these kind of programs starting to appear and the infrastructure makes it have been a huge driver of that so the announces for those at home they don't know dinner and being the founder of infrastructure masons has been a big advocate of bringing young talents, 20 years old be bringing children to the data center if needed to really start preparing the next generation of data center professionals. And at the forefront of also supporting that and I guess now it's really moving to the next gear, offering the talent. And I remember speaking to Randy, right in Brooklyn and also Jack Kumar. When you guys went to India and yours already kind of, you're talking about this without saying the names of what the programs were. So it's good to see that such big movements as well market movements are already considering some of the important topics around staff and younger members of staff and preparing for the next generation. But Philip, we talked about, you've already explained capstone as well and Lee you've also stepped in with infrastructure medicine side in the diversity side. But what's been like the one big thing that has happened so far that you really, you were surprised, like an achievement something that you weren't expecting since the program has launched. I was like, Oh, okay, I was, I did not see this coming but this is awesome. Well, you know, just to kind of expand upon it, it was, it's, it's, it's got this, this inertia that we've we've developed of people supporting this right the different companies and people from those companies right and from Google, Microsoft, Apple and so forth, they've been, you know, they listen to the students present their findings and so forth. And, and as they see the potential here, you know, you just hope that, you know, we've started small we got that snowball going down and we hope it just kind of continues to pick pay pick up the pace and so forth. And that, you know, we've also donated to the scholarship fund right so I donate a lot of my time but then we also back it with with the money and so forth and, and the, the feedback that I've got is so positive. And, and people want to give both both time and money to this effort so, but you want to make sure that that you do it right right that you don't get caught up and you make sure, because at the end of the day it's all about the students, right and, and like Lee it's it's all about the veterans and you first and foremost, set them up for success. And so if, if you know you don't lose sight about that it's not about me or edge connects or any of that kind of stuff it's about those students and given them the opportunity, because they're the future. And, and, but I think everybody's extremely excited and passionate about it as well and they see it as a great platform to to kind of assist and help and, and like I said skill this out so it's certainly rewarding. It's been challenging during coven but maybe it's been a blessing because as we do this virtually. It makes it easier to kind of interface with the students virtually and collaborate week and week out. But, but otherwise, you know, I, I, I'm just excited that, you know, we're in our second year, and you can see the, the potential of where this could go is really pleasing to me. I'm picking up on them on the potential. I want to talk what's next for this because you've also have other initiatives that are at edge connects or your colleague I'm Andrew Capron launched women connects. So there's a lot of things happening within the company within the business. But what's what's next, like can you just give a glimpse of what's going to happen over the next year two years if you want to. Well, like I said, you know, I hope to take this to some of the emerging markets like India right and Adani has such a huge name and resource and and as we kind of build out the kind of digital infrastructure kind of ecosystem of people. And in these countries, you know, that will be great and develop this curriculum so that there is not just a capstone program but universities actually start to offer a digital infrastructure degree. That would be awesome. Right. And so from, you know, universities abroad and, and so forth that would be pretty cool to to kind of develop going forward. There are a few glimpse of what that could be like with some universities in the UK and some in the US but nothing has really exploded yet so it'd be nice to see that differentiation coming into the curriculum. And Lee, I mean, we've talked about diversity in people and we've mentioned veterans and now let's really talk about the veterans. I mean, your story, the company story, it's very very interesting, it's very moving, and what you're doing as I said before it's very important. But how do you kind of relate and balance the success and the track record of salute with the human the human interest side of the story of what you're doing. The way we could make anything happen just like any other company is to be a commercial success so we needed to come to the market with a model that was proven. And we felt like the old traditional model of silos in your data center and over staffing them needed to be shook up and that's what we came with and sold to the market and because we had the engine to deliver that platform starts way back with the recruiting and selection training and then getting them into positions to gain experience and ultimately on the operations team. It gave us the chance to tie in both sides and get a sustainable program in place because the folks that we recruit and train don't show up on site the next day there's weeks and months of training that go into it then months and years of mentoring and then they get on to the operations teams and to have that kind of supply chain in place and to partner up with great companies like TechConnex gives us the ability to keep that on a sustainable basis because as they grow in their skills and move on into our client ranks, we have friends on the inside and we continue to backfill them and grow that service contract. Behind the scenes that nobody sees is that recruiting of veterans in that resource pool. And what we've hoped to do is educate the industry that the veterans that they were trying to recruit are awesome and they should keep recruiting them but they were going after such a small slice. They were going just after the veterans that had similar skill sets that they could drop into jobs and immediately become available but what we've seen is that every veteran has key skills that we need in this industry the leadership and the discipline and the critical thinking. And if we can give them the technical skills and experience they can choose whether they want to start a career in this industry or not and we've seen them just accelerate through the ranks and all kinds of success stories of people coming to us starting from cleaning data centers and moving up through the ranks to actually operate data centers and they're great and heartfelt but it's also producing that commercial engine to be able to fund it because it does come down to money and you have to fund these programs and the training initiatives and that when people try to shortcut that that's where they fall short so that balance of commercial good and social good I think it is hard to achieve but once you do it's pretty dang cool. It must be super rewarding as well. Yeah, John I would just add two things to what Lee was saying what's so great about their model right people focus on the the social good of often of what salute does, but it, it, it wouldn't be so successful if he didn't have that kind of framework to train the veterans in various disciplines throughout the data center right and so that often gets lost in terms of the, the good part of the story but you, you have to have that underline underlying fundamental like training and converting veterans into the data center industry, which is key. And the testament to that and what's cool about Lee is that, you know, and he's very happy, we've hired many salute contractors to become permanent edge connects employees right and so, and, and I assume Lee, that's a good thing right because that just allows you to continue you know the transition and now these people are not just contractors but permanent employees somewhere, and they have a career with a company like edge connects, kind of around the world. And that's the beauty of it we see that as success and other service providers will try to get you contractually obligated where you can't hire their people, but you have to realize it's going to happen so why not help and promote that and embrace it and give them an entire career path that's from the very day they start to the day they end and if they end up meeting your partner on the client side. That's a beautiful thing because there's shared common goals and values that you had along the way. It's collaboration and taking care of other people as well. It's really human capital coming into into the forefront of the discussion. And I like the point of, it's also not just about training these people and dumping them somewhere in a business somewhere around the world. It's also continuing this workforce development of continuing to get new skills, improving the skills they've got to creating the person if that makes any sense. And I know, Lee, you're a big advocate of workforce development, and it's been something you've also talked about a lot in the past about please do not just hire, please also keep developing people. I mean, do you think the markets understands that now better or you still having the same conversation that you were having a few years ago. Little, I think it's we're making progress people are starting to understand that you're seeing programs come up of other companies much larger ones than us that are getting good strong workforce development programs in place because it does take an investment, but you can also partner forth the way we've done with our clients and split the burden of that. We get that supply chain set up and through that collaboration do a lot of good as well so we published a playbook to help people understand how we did this and see if they would replicate it because plagiarism is the highest form of compliment but there's a lot of different doors to get into this industry and we think a data center infrastructure because that's my background but there's somebody that could start this for cyber technologists and providing people a step up through that door. There's lots of different spots all kinds of different places but there's always a beginning spot and if they can start at the beginning and understand what market need they're going to satisfy. I think they can set up a scheme that would do that and if not at least do it internally for what's important to you as a company. So mentorship is so important. And just bringing back to infrastructure mason's conversation. Again, we spoke about mostly younger people last time we talked we touched upon it, but let's talk about because you've done a lot of work around veterans with infrastructure mason's as well and I do think they've got a fund around this if I'm correct me if I'm wrong. So you've done with them and how has it kind of speeded up the conversation around veterans. I mean we know so for the people already mentioned as well you've got quite a few people from from lease initiative into your business. Give us an overview of the journey with infrastructure mason's around to work with veterans. Two and a half years ago we did a strategic relationship with them where I came on to run the veterans program and build it and we've made great progress and it's a great example of, we can do at salute and edge connects what we can do. But if we align ourselves with other professionals that have similar viewpoints and want to make a difference and make a change a group like infrastructure mason's is a no brainer decision. So we aligned with them and started building this program we have more than 200 people now in what we call the armed forces community where they go out they work with the different transition transition sites the military bases education centers to make them aware that we exist a lot of times it's the lack of awareness that there's so many job opportunities in data center infrastructure so we're getting out to the military. Kind of distribution centers if you think of that way that are transitioning veterans and military spouses and getting them ready for the jobs after they get out of the military and letting them know we exist and those who choose can have a path they can get scholarships through a program they can get access to training. There's free training available as well as access to the network, and you talk about a network infrastructure mason's is the who's who that data center infrastructure industry and you can see that and there's so many great success stories in that group in and of itself that are veterans. Eddie shooter one of the founders of infrastructure mason's as a veteran we're going to be publishing his story here soon and there's so many others that want to contribute and we can do that through a mechanism like infrastructure mason's crowd sourcing I guess. I think that's interesting I think the testimonials will be very, very interesting to watch as well to him or. What are you going to say something sorry. I was just going to say Lee I think you know another great thing and I touched on a little bit earlier and I don't know if you have the stats at your fingertips but you know this isn't just the US military your framework you have veterans that you obviously were a global business, but you're locally sourcing from different militaries around the world, which is amazing right across Europe and South America and so forth. Exactly, you know we're in 12 countries but we've got 15 countries militaries represented in our ranks so we're attracting veterans outside we've been working with a group called Euro meal that represents almost 30 countries and the European and all the military companies there and looking to work with any organizations like that that can help us raise awareness that there's opportunities here and then we can attract them train them develop them and get them into the industry. You're looking to say the next three to five years. I mean are you planning to go into new markets, are you going to expand the workforce. What's the plan for Salutes. Our plan is always going to embrace the client and wherever the client needs us will be there and very much like the military model if we're used to train deploy and support. We've set up all of our processes and I'm excited about countries that we're seeing start to take the expansion India has a huge standing military so they've got a lot of veterans that we could bring into this industry and India is just like every other country they've got a personnel shortage. We can help solve the personnel shortage in the industry globally with the veteran community in a lot of these countries some countries have very small militaries but still, if you've got the workforce development program in place. Only can you hire military spouses you can hire people from other groups and start them through that training process and get them into it, whether it's other industries or less represented groups in this industry. Yeah, it's a huge talent pool I think I mean I think it was actually for structure reasons I said there's about 100,000 people shortage in the data center space today or a year ago. If I'm wrong but if you just look at the veteran talent pool for example, then if you bring this houses and everyone else, then we could actually indeed like you said resolve the talent shortage that we have in our sector, at least until efficient intelligence comes in and then we have another thing to talk about 40 years time. I'm going to brag but I think this partnership with edge connects proves that you can solve the talent shortage we've solved the talent shortage with a collaborative relationship where we take responsibility for one part they for the next and people can grow. And there is no personnel shortage unless you let it be a shortage you can take advantage of it with programs like what we've done. It's almost becoming a self inflicted thing if you're not taking steps to really address it sustainably. I can just ask this one very quickly because last time we spoke we spoke about maybe some stigma. There's some businesses and people might still have about hiring veterans. Have you seen that change special on the back of cove it's because it has become hard sometimes to manage workforce with COVID going on and all this so how people change their perception. There's been a lot of positive change when COVID hit and there were lack of resources to get out to the data center sites, who better than the military that's used to working in hazardous environments and wearing protective gear to have go to that site for you and we dispatched got some very important projects because of that willingness and us understanding how to work the protocols and how to get through the government boundaries to be able to do the projects and such. So we showed that critical thinking that ability to think globally but act locally. It came through every time and I think that established great positive momentum in that regard. Philip, when's the next acquisition. I'm joking. Is there anything that I didn't ask these guys would like to answer. Yeah, I know you're always going to want to get scoop. Like to know about the money side. I'm joking, but we were. Yeah, we were acquired as you know by ourselves last year by eqt and and that, you know, you know, being based out of Sweden obviously sustainability is a big thing. And so we're like minded in that and so we continue to push out our sustainability efforts there. We've been very aggressive in terms of our expansions as you as you I articulated early on, but this is going to continue right so expect a couple more of this year. Some organic some inorganic some expansions and so forth and so that's great having a partner like eqt that was the whole rationale is to quickly scale up. And as Lee said it's a bit of a trickle down right in terms of why we're, you know, demanding his global expansion and looking for him to support us in India and other markets in Asia is is you're just, you know, we're driven by our customers to further go abroad right, you know, South America used to be is predominantly Brazil. So you're seeing Buenos Aires and Santiago and Bogota Mexico City all these markets are each getting their own kind of, you know, cloud infrastructure and more content and so forth. We talked about this before, like with the pandemic our homes have become the new edge right and so to maintain that quality of service and quality experience when we're working at home, studying at home streaming at home, shopping exercise all these things are putting burdens on the network infrastructure as you need the data centers to help alleviate those bottlenecks and that's really what's driving our customers demand for more markets around the world and so you were it's just very busy times but exciting to be in the data center space right now and continue to kind of grow and scale up. I mean it's very interesting journey I mean I've been chasing you for that journey over the last four to five years so it's been interesting to see the change and how are you done to be fair because it's been massive growth over the years. But let me just pick up on the working from home point I feel it made. How was it shifting training and all these people from I would assume in a physical location to doing it from home. We're definitely leveraging technology as much as we can because of the restrictions of COVID when we do training sessions we end up doing them virtually more often than not where before we would do them face to face. So we've actually started operations virtually when the borders were closed in different places and so we understand how to work virtually it's just when it rubber meets the road and you need our guys on site, our guys are going to be on site they won't be working from home because our jobs at the data center. It's just the training and the program management and resourcing can be done remotely. So we do minimize who needs to go to the site but when they need to go to the site they're there and they follow all the protocols and we coordinate globally. Okay. Last question, if you had to describe to anyone in one word, what words would you use on how based on how things are going so far business wise. Brilliant. For the industry. Yeah, and your business especially. Oh, I just think it's outstanding. It's, it's tickled me because we've done something that I think is very hard to do we've achieved commercial success and social success and being able to do that, starting from zero is pretty, pretty happy. Yeah, look, I mirror that and just say it's been exciting. I've been in this space a long time. And it's, it's, you know, it's been a tough year for many people and I'm very grateful to be in this industry, and just excited about the growth that we've experienced and the growth that we see in the pipeline. So, you know, it's been, it's been busy, and I'm, it's been odd I haven't been on a plane in a year and a half but still it's, it's, you know, we'll get there some point but usually I see you some someplace around the world Joe but we've been doing I wasn't playing last weekend sorry. Yeah, we've been doing these virtually and we're still, you know getting things done. Nevertheless, so it's been good. It's been definitely interesting. But look, Philip Marangella, thank you so much for your time. I think your views as well for tuning into JSA TV and JSA podcasts don't forget to check out social social channels for more content.