 Live from the JSA Podcast Studio, presenting Data Movers, showcasing the leaders behind the headlines in the telecom and data center infrastructure industry. Hey everybody, welcome to our podcast series, Data Movers. I'm your host, Jamie Scott-Okitaya, CEO and founder of JSA. Along with my fabulous co-host, top B2B social media influencer, Mr. Evan Kristal. Hey Evan. Hey Jamie and hey everyone, welcome to Data Movers, where we sit down with the most influential men and women of today's leading telco and data center world, supporting the network infrastructure requirements of our modern world. Speaking of brave new world, Jamie, I think we're traveling again, if I understand correctly. Do you have any events coming up? I do, I do. I'm actually on a plane on Sunday night, Mother's Day. I'm taking off to go to ITW, International Telecoms Week, and that is happening in Maryland near DC. And I'm very excited. We're actually on Monday, May 9th, launching the greener data movement. So we have a round table and a cocktail reception at ITW, that we're really proud to support and promote. So again, getting the industry to think greener is really part of our mission here at JSA. And I know a lot of conversations having here on our Data Movers podcast, as well as of course, what we'll have today. Wow, that's super exciting. And I guess you'll have maybe a book signing, or what can we expect at the big party at ITW? Well, first, yes, there will be a table in the back where our authors are invited to sit down and sign any of the books that are being sold on site. We have over 600 books coming. So please, please buy some so we don't have to lug them home. But also, we will be signing greener teenies, apple martinis, so our signature drink as well. Awesome. Well, I look forward to trying that. But speaking of awesome stuff, we have a great guest today. Yes, absolutely. He's so excited. I have to say such a wonderful person to introduce you guys to. If you don't know him already, to our fabulous industry, we are talking to Andrew Roof. He's the director of sales and marketing for Janitsa, North America. Hey, Andrew. Hey, Juan, yeah. Hey, thank you for having me on the JSA podcast here. Excited to talk with you guys and to everyone out there. So thank you. We are so honored. And you know what? Let's just start with a very easy one, a low hanging fruit. You, of course, worked with so many exciting companies across the tech fields in industry spanning, oh my gosh, electronic manufacturing, aerospace, semiconductor, IT, renewables and the environment. So what makes you so excited to call Janitsa your home? Well, I think that's that's it right there is, Janitsa is a power monitoring company. So power is everywhere, especially in the tech world. And being able to work for the company that keeps me involved in multiple different industries, like the semiconductor, like data centers, like renewables. I absolutely love all of it. So it's a different pitch to each different segments, the different style of how you're working with different companies against the different market segments. And so it keeps it exciting and fun. And I get to work with a great company here as well. So that's it in a nutshell, it's mostly just being able to diversify across different industries, I think is a big appeal for me. Awesome. And I learned Janitsa is a German-based company and proudly has a made in Germany label. Isch kann at was Deutsch auf Deutsch mit dem Unterreden oder in this kind of English? No, I guess not. I guess we have to do it. I've been picking up words too, not as sensitive as that. But yeah, perfect. OK, so maybe next time we'll do a German version. But how does that background and the made in Germany label translate into the US market? What's the story there? I understand that maybe even a family sort of run business. And tell us about branching out in the US. Yeah, so it is a second generation family business. It actually started back in the 60s. And originally was a power factor correction manufacturer as well as a switchboard manufacturer and grew from there from the original founder and owner. And then his son Marcus Janitsa took it over kind of in the 80s and started focusing on power monitoring equipment, so essentially meters, and has grown business from there. And so really, it's been a European-based organization but has essentially branched out quite a bit within the last five to 10 years to different segments around the world. So North America being one of those. And in fact, I'm one of the first couple employees for North America are branched over here. And it was really the customers that we're working with were large global clients. And so it was a natural transition for the company to migrate and start an office here in North America and start running operations here in North America as well. And so since then, we've been growing exponentially quite a bit here in North America and South America, Australia, Africa, Asia, it's been blowing up everywhere for us. But yeah, again, back to your question there. So the main in Germany label is the fantastic ones especially it resonates really well for North America because when you think made in Germany, you think of that high quality, really well engineered products. So you think the BMWs, the Mercedes kind of cars and the well-designed and works for a long time kind of a product that comes from that label. And it really makes sense with Geniza Brand as well. Yeah, for sure, well-designed. And you guys are really focusing on what the marketplace needs. Energy management, of course, being Geniza's bread and butter. And of course, on our end, data centers are being our bread and butter here at Data Movers, our listeners. So could you tell us how Geniza helps data center clients better manage energy? Well, I think the number one thing that we provide is visibility. And what I mean by that is visibility of your power distribution in a facility. So for a data center, for example, you're using up quite a bit of power and you need to have that power constantly flowing to essentially your money making assets, which is those server racks that are out there in the data homes. And if power is not flowing out there, then that's not a great for their business there. So having that visibility of the power distribution is what we provide for data centers and in multiple ways. One is just seeing the flow of power going through the facility, that's the easy one. But we really dial down a little bit deeper into the power quality side of things too. And I won't try to get into technical for you guys, but really the power quality makes a big impact on servers. They're very sensitive to the quality of power that's going through the facility. And if the quality is not where it should be, you're gonna have damage, you're gonna have some server issues or even heating up components that are unnecessary, too much heat going to them that might fail. So preventing failures, preventing downtime is really the goal of the products that we sell to the data center markets there. And it goes back to that, that visibility standpoint and the health of your power systems in your facility is what we provide. Very cool, literally, very cool. So you helped data centers cut back on energy usage, but you also worked in renewable energy before Iaditza. So tell us, where is this world of greener energy, sustainability, where are we headed over the next one or two years? It's so important. It really, especially for data center, they use so much power to run their facilities. And you really don't know where that power is coming from. Are you sourcing that power from a cold factory or a natural gas power plant? Or you sourcing that from a renewable source, such as a wind, solar or hydro power station there. And so having that understanding of sustainability and where you're purchasing that power is important for data centers because the amount of power you're producing is a factor of how much pollution is out there from the power plants. And so there's a lot of good options that data centers have. One of them is just working with the utilities within your area to understand how many renewable resources they're purchasing into their grid and supplying to you. Another option for them would be to just go out and purchase power directly from the renewable source and having a power purchase agreement created, specifically for your facilities. And there's quite a few renewable organizations building wind and solar power plants every day. It's constantly getting added to the grid and there's a lot of good sources for purchasing green power out there. So within the facility though, there's also quite a bit more that you can push for sustainability in terms of what type of backup power that you decide to use, whether it's a diesel or natural gas. But there's also, I was reading about there some data centers that are experimenting with hydrogen backup power as well, which would be fantastic to see in the future here. Love all those ideas, Andrew. Yes, yes, yes. You know what? And we were talking earlier about travel, events coming on line again. We actually, we just saw Janitsa recently at DCD Connect in New York. And you guys were there demoing the latest updates to your network analysis software, GridViz 8.0. Yeah. So what were the attendees? So your demo, most impressed with, what was the response there? Yes, specifically with the newest version, the 8.0 that you mentioned there, there's a lot more key features of adaptability towards, let's use the data centers for example, a lot more adaptability towards a data center operation. And what I mean by that is GridViz allows people to not just visually see the power in their facilities, but you can create your KPIs, you can create your specific dashboards customized towards your operation. And on top of that, we have customized alarms that you can create. We have alerts, specific alerts to keep your system, your operations flowing well. And then one of the biggest features we added to 8.0 is what we call the report editor. Every organization out there is gonna have some custom report that they need to continue their operations full and correctly. And so we've created this report editor so you can actually customize drag and drop different bar graphs, line graphs, different data points that you wanna put on there, tables, whatever it might be, and create that custom report. And so I think that was the biggest eye-opener for clients when we were demoing the system is just how easily adaptable that the system can be towards the operation of every different facility out there. And on top of that, we actually have the ability to pull in multiple facilities into one system. And so when the administrator is logging in, he only has to log into one system versus an individual site every time. And then we could pull all that information in and compare all the data points that are collected out of a facility into one system there too. Very cool. I know the Hanover Mesa in Germany is the biggest trade fair in Europe. I'm sure you guys will be there. It's coming up in June. It'll be fun to see what new stuff you're announcing as well. But let's switch gears. We have our rapid fire section where we try to embarrass you by asking you some fun questions. No, just kidding, we're not really trying to embarrass you. But tell us the first thing that comes to mind. Give us a fun fact that might surprise us. I hope to surprise you, but maybe not. I've been in the technology field for a while. So that's kind of my natural focus of life. And so here at my home, I really love adapting my home into a technology hub. And what I mean by that is all the cool tools that are out there for a smart home, I've just been totally geeked out on for a while. And so the smart HVAC systems and thermostats and lighting systems that I've integrated has been kind of a bit of a hobby but also a fun adventure for the family to do. I even have a smart ceiling fan. I can go onto my phone right now and actually change the settings on, turn on, off, all that kind of stuff. So that's kind of been a bit of a hobby for me. Yeah, I could understand that with your tech sense of it. The ceiling fan, that's a new one. So I'm looking into that one, absolutely. All right, so if you could have lunch with a famous person in history, who would it be? And why? I would probably pick Leonardo da Vinci, if of course we could speak the same language, but really it's that inventor's mentality of going out there and creating new things and just the ideas that he had over the years has been fantastic. I was growing up, learning about him in school and stuff, it was kind of an inspiration. People actually got great, amazing things out there and he did it. So that was a big inspiration for me growing up as well. But I would probably pick him out there as someone I would love to meet. Great pick. Awesome, I agree. And if you were to give Leonardo your smartphone, you'd probably blow him away. What would he say? Oh, yeah, easily, yeah. As the most used app on your smartphone, like on your home screen. The most used one, unfortunately it'll probably be the generic stuff. So the emails, the calendars, those kinds of things, sales. So I'm constantly on those two things, but aside from work related apps, it would probably be social media, the Twitter, I like going through Twitter a bit, the LinkedIn as well. I respect you already. This is amazing. Yeah, it's a high and low kind of fluctuation. Sometimes I'm really into it for a while, then I'll get away from it, but then I always find it, going back to it's always fun to do. Sometimes I'm really into Twitter and sometimes I'm really, really into Twitter. So I flubbed you. Yeah, exactly, yeah. Flubbed you, Kevin. Yeah. So, all right, come on, let's dig just a little deeper here. What is your hidden talent that you have? Surprise us. Hidden talent, I mean, I don't know if I'd call it the talent or more just a hobby, if anything. I'm kind of a person that's a jack of all trades. So there's quite a bit out there that I explore here and there. The family I think would be a hobby of mine and just kind of being a person that adapts well in many of different environments, I think would probably be my biggest talent that I would have up there. So any environment that I'm in, whether it's a big trade show or on stage, I give a presentation or just hanging back with family, it's very adaptable in my personality here. So I guess that would probably be my biggest talent, it's just the adaptability. I love that answer, yeah. Yeah, very good, very good. That would make a great college essay. I'm gonna give that to my son. There you go. He's gonna be flying to colleges next year. So that's a really, it's a good one. And if you were to write a book, what would it be about? And you're not allowed to say energy management for dummies. That's already taken. But what other book would you write? There's two different topics that probably come to mind. One, I would like to do a book on the modern sales cycle, sales person. Cause it's different. You're not at behind a desk on the phone all the time with a row of decks, just flipping through the phone. And there's so many technology tools and a different way that you're reaching out to people. I would probably do kind of a self-help kind of sales, modern sales cycle type of book. The other one would probably be a science fiction one. Maybe something around a utopian empire kind of scenario or one where, you know, imagine life if money wasn't ever invented kind of scenario, something completely out there, inventive right there. Oh, I love that. I love it. All right. Well, you didn't embarrass yourself at all. Very disappointed. But thanks. Yeah. Thanks so much for joining us. We can't wait to see all of your upcoming releases and functionality. It's really so important. What you're doing, particularly in this time of high energy costs and climate change, there couldn't be a more important topic. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And Genetza brings that transparency and flexibility that really our data centers really need right now to make a dent in that carbon emissions reduction. So thank you for what you do. We so appreciate you. And hey, viewers, listeners, if you are enjoying today's Data Movers podcast, as much as we did, go ahead and check us out, jsa.net slash podcast for upcoming Data Movers episodes. We release every other week on Wednesday mornings. And be sure to follow us on Twitter. Yeah, thank you for having us. You'll see our tweets and we'll pick up the conversation there where Jay Scott and Evan Kirstel on Twitter and on Snapchat. Just kidding, we're not on Snapchat, but in any case, we'll look forward to happy networking, right, Jimmy? Yes, absolutely. Andrew, always a pleasure. Thank you, my friend. We want to have you back. You want to hear more? Definitely. And as always, think green guys, stay safe and happy networking.