 Live from the JSA Podcast Studio, presenting Data Movers, showcasing the leaders behind the headlines in the telecom and data center infrastructure industry. Welcome to our new podcast series, Data Movers. I'm Jamie Scott-Okitaya, CEO of JSA, along with my fabulous co-host, Mr. Evan Christel, the top V2B social media influencer. Hey Evan. How are you doing? Were you into chat rooms in the 90s, like AOL chat rooms and all that kind of thing? A little. It kind of scared me, but if it was about my dog, then yes, I was there. Okay. Well, there's a new kind of social network on the scene. It's called Clubhouse, very LA, and it's an audio chat-based social network where you go and you meet people like they were chat room style, but you're talking and listening and learning. And it's the hottest thing now in and on sort of social media. I'm starting to see the buzz, people announcing their new Clubhouse group. It's really interesting. So tell me, is this like a response to Twitter and some of the other big texts saying no to certain politicians lately and kicking them out, giving them boot? It seems to be more about people wanting that sort of human connection. And it's not like a Facebook or Twitter and LinkedIn, it's text or video-based. It's all audio chats. You don't want to literally talk to people like we used to do in the 80s. So it's rather a different approach. There's no recording. There's no content. It's just talking and it's kind of a new phenomenon. And in this day of lockdowns and bubbles and people seem to really be into it. Yeah, and we're seeing podcasts obviously on the rise. So I think folks are really drawn to, again, that human connection, hearing people feeling their emotions through their words, not just seeing it on text or video that you might not necessarily be able to connect with. But yeah, I mean, power of audio. It's definitely. The next big thing. So speaking of audio, we have a great guest today. We do. And when we've conceived of data movers, I'll tell you there were some key guests that we wanted just out of the gate because they did really personify what we had in mind here with this podcast, which is to sit down with the most influential men and women of our industry. Really, the leading telcos and data centers supporting that network infrastructure. So I'm really excited about our next guest. Please welcome Mr. Todd Cushing. He is the president of 1623 Farnham. Hey, Todd. Hey, how are you, Janie? Really good things. Good. Have been pleasure. Yeah, likewise. Welcome, Todd. Good to see you. I think you're in Omaha, Nebraska. Yes, sir. A little bit of snow going on today and about 25 mile an hour winds. A beautiful house up. Oh, I love it. Well, I'm going to go right there. That's kind of my favorite winter destination. But before we dive into your background, tell me a good Warren Buffett story. I'm sure you know Warren. You ran into him in the diner. Everyone knows everyone else in Omaha, right? Sure. Warren likes to eat a place called Garots. And he typically likes to have a hotbed sundae. So the rumor is he asked his doctor if he ate hotbed sundaes or ate healthy, how much would it extend his life? It was something like six months. And he's like, you know, hotbed sundaes for me and a Coke. But I've literally been at lunch with people before. They were like, you know, we want to see where Warren likes to hang out when we did it. And sure as heck, he came in and they put him behind the planner so nobody hassles him. Had some people walk in and I didn't know who they were. Has his little lunch thing with those guys and it's kind of private part of the restaurant. But that's Garots is where he likes to have lunch all the time in Omaha. That's great. Yeah, he's one of my business heroes. Seems like a wonderful guy and he's not even on Reddit. So, you know, what a great individual. So speaking of industries and investing, and it's been a tough year for many industries, but it seems like you guys at 1623 Farnham have had quite a year with some really important milestones and persevered against what's been a tough environment generally, you know, tell us more. I see some headlines here, like a $40 million expansion, all kinds of good stuff. So give us some insight if you would. Yeah, for us, we were designated an essential facility right away. So having the access because nobody knew how locked down things we're going to get, that we had the paperwork so if we needed to get back and forth and we're an existing business, existing data center. So we're upgrading it to the $40 million phase one of the expansion. And we are able to keep the facility up and running, customers happy, and expand the electrical mechanical capabilities by eight fold from what it was before. So we'll have eight megawatts at the curb, it's below ground, transformers, subterranean. And the clients are watching us evolve. So a lot of them are very happy to see an investment happening in a facility that's been around for quite a while in the middle of the US and to see it taking to a new level of security, a new level of infrastructure just from a fiber standpoint, the vaults, the way that the risers and the point of entries are managed is just, it's what it would be as it almost was a new build, though it's an existing. So a lot of times the remodels a lot harder than a Greenfield. So it's a big deal for us to have it happen. And what we've also seen happen this year is the rise in remote hands and people wanting to not come on site. So they want to deploy and they want to ship a cabinet, maybe partially full or have us just racket sack form which we're doing a lot more than that that we've ever done before. And the traffic volume is podcasts, Zoom, Microsoft meetings, team meetings, et cetera. There's a lot more volume coming through that our customers, the carriers have had to respond to. So we've seen a lot of expansion in that regard as well. Yeah, and we're definitely seeing it on our end to the trends are really insane the demand for data center services and especially into connection, huge rise, huge uptake there. What's responsible do you think? You know, it's the people that weren't doing video, I think that maybe weren't comfortable having a video conversation or even sending an invite for one. So you'll see people kind of have an embarrassing moment first when this first started now they're getting to be pros as you've had that interface with them. And we see it with clients that we talked to as well that are, hey, I need a bigger I export. So I'm going to go from 10 gig or multiple 10 gigs to 100 gig because of that. So we've seen carriers bring in new routes as a result of that. So it's just a volume. It's the sheer size of data that people are trying to move files. They're trying to interconnect. It's the ecosystem that's really not one thing people have really got. So they're using cloud for this or enterprise typical for that. And they're changing their mix around a little bit. And we've said some people who are just a normal contract and have said, hey, we're going to move from traditional enterprise cabinet to this where we're going to go into an on-ramp partner and we're really going to the cloud. So we've seen that happen too. And it wasn't like they locked down or people couldn't access their systems to make those changes. People continue to evolve their technology. Yeah, and you guys are the home to quite a unique internet peering hub, Omaha IAX exchange. So tell us the significance of having that in very close proximity to your data center. Sure. IAXs are still kind of mystifying to some people. A lot of people don't understand what an IAX is. They're European, they're in bigger cities, but for Omaha, we're not Dallas, we're not Los Angeles. So people here in our region had to have some education. We've had the content folks using it. So your Akamai or your carriers or your different people that wanted to share content to hyperscale want to put some things out there. But for people to understand it has made it really evolve. And the IAX was not owned by us. It was in our facility and it was called the Omaha IAX, but it was owned by somebody else. So that group was a good friend, a good partner for us. And we were able to negotiate with them and say, hey, if you ever wanted to sell it, we'd sure be interested. So the time came around, they were interested and we were ready and we made the purchase and now we're making some upgrades and changes. And we've tethered off of our IAX now, we're gonna tether some more. So there would be remote, almost satellite IAXs off of the Omaha IAX. But I think having control of it, we were a little concerned that maybe from a carrier competition, because a carrier neutral, it'd be a problem, but it really hasn't been a problem. It's been a tertiary network that people can use to move data and connect on when they don't want to buy solid bandwidth, that they have to be accountable to. Yeah, I can tell you firsthand, the beauty and the strength of the business model for the data center owners to also be managing those core interconnections and the pairing fabric all in-house, it actually solves for a lot of problems. So I love that story. We also know that 1623 Farnham, just to skip away from Google's largest North American cloud node, as well as other hyperscalers and OTTs in the area, what has led them to Omaha? Why Omaha? I think the economic incentives that Nebraska had, it was always competitive between Omaha, really Nebraska and Iowa. Iowa is literally the Missouri River, which were, practically were about three miles away from where their large site is. Google now has three sites within seven miles of us and they're gonna build another one in Lincoln. So they've got several hundred acres there. We think it's the economic development and the cost of power is a big one. The amount of telecom that crosses right through the middle of the U.S., the crosshairs are on Omaha. And then I think that the free cooling, I mentioned a little chilly in Omaha, we're gonna be seeing like eight below real-time, wind chills will be 25, 30 below. So you get 7,200 hours a year free cooling. So that doesn't hurt. So you can find a good environment and there's a lot of geeks, strategic air command is in Omaha, a lot of large processing data centers, mutual Omaha, Fidelity has one here, Travelers has one here, first data, which is Pfizer. A lot of enterprise data centers that grew a lot of geeks and then their kids are now working at these places, believe it or not. So it's fun to see how it's evolved but it's a real strong communications. IT is a big deal in Omaha. Yeah, not just infrastructure. I mean, you're becoming quite a hotbed for innovation. All the action isn't just in LA and San Francisco. I was reading about the new 5G lab there as some cool stuff happening from the National Science Foundation at night, USA at night around augmented reality challenges and application building, the Facebook reality labs initiative. So you guys have a lot going on. Yeah, thank you, I appreciate it. I think that augmented reality most people recognize that's gonna be a big deal. How much is gonna be a big deal is just fascinating as we talk to our clients from what they're trying to achieve. It can be military, it can be medical, it can be marketing, it can be just interfacing the way we are now and entertainment is a big part of the gaming piece of it. So we have people literally will be in proximity of our building so they can have that exposure to the 5G. We've got a C-Ran that's on the entire fourth floor is a variety. So they basically, they're C-Rans in our facility. We've got a lot of 5G in Omaha. So for a city our size, I'm an Apple guy by nature. I'm sitting here with 5G on my phone. I've got a lucky enough to have it. My wife doesn't think so, but I do a antenna in my front yard. And so I've got 110 fiber to that thing. And I know a lot more about it than probably my neighbors would want to know. But it's, I've got awesome response time. So it's 5G in the augmented reality challenge has been neat. Greg Elliott, who's been someone on some social media stuff for us. He's one of our sales people. He's based out of Kansas City and he's worked with Kansas City and Omaha and jointly put together a resume of how we could compete regionally with other regions of other areas, other cities. And the Chamber of Commerce here has been very much involved. We've had universities, hospitals that are in AI that have wanted to be part of it. So to see what I thought was a niche or maybe it wasn't maybe as mature where they've got super maturity. These folks are creating organs and things in augmented reality. So it's amazing what they can do and share in the size of these files. And that gives us an insight to, again, it's not gonna be just dark fiber in a network you're gonna move these kind of files with. It's gonna be 5G at that location and probably some dark fiber and other things in order to move that kind of file. You're gonna send 3D or holograms or things without being able to do that type of bandwidth. Yeah, and to your earlier point, I love how the cool factor of augmented reality and this innovation, this technology is really enticing our younger generation also to understand really the nuts and bolts of our infrastructure world. And hopefully we'll be attracting fresh blood to our industry because of all these new cool reality challenges and innovation going on. Circling back to your experiences throughout your career and knowing what you know now, if you could go back in time and give us a piece of advice to your younger self at the beginning of your career, what would it be? You know, I think that I would probably, I would probably move around a little more. You know, I stayed at first data for 28 years and that was a long time and it was operations, it was facilities, it was global but it was a great place to be that I go to then need to maybe learn not so maybe I was old school, you know, I'm 57 so back then I was like, stay there. But it's like, I think maybe I would hop around a little more. And you know, it was funny as we worked in Asia or you know, there were people were moving around quite a bit and I think I would do more of that myself. Yeah, good fun. It's always nice to change perspectives. So let's dive into a little bit of a rapid fire round. We'll go through some fun questions, fun insights to share with the audience. If you could have lunch with a famous person in history, who would it be and why? Probably either Steve Jobs or Henry Ford. They're pretty similar, but in different ways. They change the world. They really did. One of the, probably Steve Jobs. Yeah, I mean, the insights alone would be worth it. You're obviously a pretty driven guy in your work life, but what do you do to unwind? What do you do for balance hobbies or otherwise? Well, I'm seeing those boats behind you and I'm a woodboat guy. So I've got a 59 lineman and a 54th century and a couple other toys, but I like woodboats. I'm a motorhead. So I like to work on motors and wood when I get a chance. So I'm a member of the antique classic Boating Society, but I've been for over 20 years. But I like to teach younger people about boats, mechanical things, stuff that was pre-electrical control. So it's the alter ego to what I do every day relative to managing a data center, running those kinds of things, but it's woodboats. That's fantastic. We'll send us a couple of picks we can share with this episode. I'm sure there are folks like me who'd love to see it. What's your favorite food? And I don't know much about cuisine and Omaha, but maybe it's an ice cream sundae with Warren Buffett or something a little more exotic. Omaha has some pretty good steaks, but my favorite is my birthday. Because my mom used to make a thing called Hamlo. And that's once a year, the family will put up with it. My wife will make it for me, but it's Hamlo. That sounds like the most Omaha, Nebraska dish ever. So yes, I can imagine Hamlo. Right now, movies, we're all glued to our televisions with the pandemic. If you could watch one movie on repeat, 24 hours straight, which one would it be? Well, the woodboat guy in me likes on Golden Pond. However, Alien is probably my favorite. I thought the first Alien scared the heck out of me and it was awesome. So Alien. Alien's a good one. Even the whole series is they did a good job with all the successive movies. Well, look, thank you so much for joining us, Jamie. Yeah, thanks so much, Todd. It's always a pleasure to have you on JSA TV and particularly here on Data Movers. I got to learn so much more about you. I'm very fascinating. And we'll have the wooden boats, that's awesome. Thank you. So if you enjoyed today's Data Movers podcast, be sure to check us out on jsa.net slash podcast for upcoming Data Movers episodes releasing every other week on Wednesday mornings. And also go ahead and check us out, right, Evan? Yeah, follow us on Twitter at JSCOTTO and Evan Curstell and let's continue the conversation. Absolutely. Thanks to everyone for listening in and happy networking.