 Welcome to JSA TV Europe and our live two-day event on 2023 predictions. I'm Jean-Marc Lim and joining me today is Martin Murphy, co-founder and partner at AMS Helix, recently acquired by Salute Mission Critical. Martin, thank you so much for talking to me. You've definitely had an exciting year and exciting 2022 with this acquisition as well, which has really grown the business from night to day. Before we delve into the acquisition and what's, I mean, I don't even know, it's like AMS Helix, Salute, what you are doing now. Let's talk about the market dynamics first. So what would you say have been the many events in 2022 that have shaped the data sector in Europe so far? So yeah, this sector that keeps us all excited. I think looking back at 22, it's probably seeding some slowdown towards the end of the year. I think certainly in tier one markets, I think transactions are probably slowing a bit again in the tier one markets. And I think we're seeing a lot of movement and opportunity, M&A activity in the kind of tertiary and tier two markets. So markets that might not have been that attractive, you know, two to three years ago, we're seeing a lot of kind of movement in there as well. You know, one of the reasons that we set the business up, AMS Helix in June 21 was seeing a new kind of asset class emerging to the market, which is Edge. And I think, you know, we chose that spot for a couple of reasons. You know, we wouldn't have to sort of elbow anybody else out of the way. It was a new asset class that, you know, hyperscale asset class was fairly busy at that time. And, you know, I think we've got the time and right. We've seen the opportunity we've been taking into all the kind of tertiary and tier two markets across Europe and seeing a lot of appetite. And I think I'd probably term it as subscale, hyperscale. So it's not the 50, 60 megabots, but generally it's the same, the same end user that's driving the growth. Interesting. So you think that's going to be one of the big trends of next year, the continuation as a trend into 2023? Yeah, I think, you know, the tier one markets, they're crowded. There's power issues, planning issues, tax incentives are kind of being reduced. And I think, you know, the distribution of connectivity, latency, all of that stuff as a requirement is really driving that distributed. Not just distributed edge from a scale perspective, but just the kind of growth out through each continent. I mean, it's not just in the air, right? It's happening in Asia Pacific too. But yeah, it's very much probably going to get some more momentum as we go into 2023. Okay. And then so, and then as we go into 2023 as well, you're going to be rebranding, changing things around, you're going to become fully part of salute. It gives us a spin of what we can expect from him. Excellent slash salute. So I think as of January, we've all committed. It's just salute. So anybody that mentions AMS helix after that, it's a dollar in the jar. So no doubt pay for the Christmas party next year. But no, the alignment between both organizations was very tight. The vision, the vision of leading with technology and by that, I mean, being able to deliver technology enabled operations into our sector. The capability that AMS helix brought from a consulting perspective, you know, our business was consulting due diligence project management client representation and pre construction and construction and life cycle. Salute very much established, you know, in facility management in IT. And then I'm not sure if you know, but salute made a further acquisition a couple of weeks ago of iconics who are commissioning QC company based in the US who also have aspirations to kind of go global. So I think what you're going to see from Salute in 2023 is an organization that's way broader than what it was at the start of 22. It's able to service the life cycle, you know, of the data center from end to end for our customers globally. I'm going to see a lot of investment in just driving that technology, you know, as to try and talk about facility management operations generally talk about people. I think aspirationally, we want to lead with technology and fill the gaps if we can with people. And that's not to try and, you know, stop people getting in the industry. I think we've got a real job rich talent short market so if we can point the talent, you know, exactly what it's needed. And all of the peripheral stuff we can trust the technology to do that. And that's instead it's not technology it's the human behind it. I just, I really feel we don't trust the technology, you know, technology companies are driving north of 80% of our growth globally around the world and the data industry. And, and still we insist on a person to walk the rooms, take the readings and do all that stuff. It's, we need to get past that we really do. And it costs time and money. I was going to ask is you've got a presence in the UK and a couple other countries in Europe. If we look geographically how are you going to grow the brands in Europe, talking about like offices staff hires expansions and all that. Yeah, so at the moment, the UK and the Netherlands are are strong with offices in both regions. We've been busy creating entities and that registrations and places like Switzerland and Germany and Belgium and Spain and Italy. I think at the same time that actually solo have been doing so as well so we got some work to do to merge that together. And I think from, from an immediate perspective, there's not many countries that we're not going to be able to service. We had some conversations about some opportunity in the Middle East. You know, we're all ready in the tier one, tier two and some tertiary markets already so I think it's, it's going to be a journey. It's going to be smart anticipating the opportunity that's coming at us and be prepared to stand up entities, offices, you know, hire. I think we need to become, you know, almost a sort of talent machine to be able to get the people on board. And that's, that's a challenge but it's also something I'm immensely looking forward to is finding talent in adjacent industries, whether that's oil and gas or aeronautical and being able to take them into this industry. And, you know, the way that our business is shaped now, you know, the breadth of job and opportunity that's available from finance to HR to project management, consulting, you know, facility operations. It's great. It feels like there really is going to be the start of something very special. Interesting. So, because, I mean, the sector has often been a bit inward looking in terms of looking for talent, but the doors are starting to open up. So you think next year could be the year where the doors really open up to other industries, to talent to come from other industries because I guess we also need it. There's a shortage, a big shortage in this space. We absolutely do. And I had a conversation with a hyperscaler last year. And it's normally that, you know, the end user customer that's dictating the type of person and maybe carrying out some final interviews. And the conversation literally went from the need data center experience to must not have the center experience because, you know, we need the diversity, right? Of thought of people just different. We've been, we shouldn't be proud of how insular we've been in recent years about keeping the industry a secret and recycling the talent. It's not productive from an innovation, you know, perspective. Yeah, it's definitely a refreshing thing to hear. And hopefully we're going to have a lot more new faces over the next 12, 24 months. And then Martin, so if people want to reach out and learn more about salutes, I was going to say AMS Helix and then salutes and salutes operations in Europe, where they can go? So they can reach out directly to me or any of the team through LinkedIn. I think you'll find is fairly easy on a search. AMS Helix website is still up, albeit at point should directly to salutes website. But, you know, if anybody's interested in the career out there, whether it's moving continents to take up an opportunity, we'd absolutely love to talk to you. You know, this industry is. I reviewed our sheet today. We've got over 50 vacancies just in Europe alone and, you know, a team working on it, trying to be creative. So yeah, we're, we're a talent business. And, you know, we, we've got to, we've got to get better at finding it. Yeah. And by you will be very busy next year. And then speaking of that, so if you had to choose one word to describe how you feel about next year, I don't use maybe the word busy. What word would you choose? Optimism, excited, just, yeah, you know, a lot of people joined the AMS Helix business, which is only 18 months old, by the way. And they believed in me, they believed in my partner, Clive Fotheringham, and our principles and what we stood for. You know, they, they bought into the salute vision, our customers bought into the salute vision. So we made the whole process of being acquired. This is to our customers. This is what it looks like. You know, they were, they were very excited about it to our people. This is what it looks like. And I think everybody in both organizations now is, you know, super excited to go and realize the opportunity that's in front of us and, and just get things done for customers, right? At the end of the day, we want to be the people that when a customer's got a problem, there's a confidence in picking up the phone and calling salute that it can be resolved. In 18 months, it was definitely like a quick exit, but it's always wonderful to watch, to witness something like that. Yeah, I mean, I was, I thought I was busy in the last 18 months, but in the last month since the acquisition, it's got crazy. So you're looking forward to Christmas, to that week. That day, I think it's going to be. No, it's excited. When you work with people every day and you're growing and you're hiring people, you're promoting people. It just gives an energy in itself to you, to the business and people see that right, whether it's customers or, you know, people you meet. So, yeah. Yeah, it's a beautiful phase. I mean, with that said, I wish you a very happy Christmas. But thank you so much for coming on, Martin. And I hope you enjoyed the chat. And I'm sure we're going to catch up a lot more in the coming months as the business evolves as well. And then also thank you to our viewers for tuning to JSA TV Live. Don't forget to check our social channels for more content. And until next time, happy networking.