 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 Okutaya, CEO and founder of JSA. Along with my fabulous co-host, happy to be social media influencer, Mr. Evan Pristel. Hey Evan. Hey Jamie and hi everyone. Thanks for joining Data Movers where we sit down with the most influential folks leading today's telco and data center world, supporting the network infrastructure requirements of our modern workplace. Jamie, I have a question for you. Do you still believe in email marketing? Is that something you still do at JSA? Sure, sure. It's actually pretty big deal. It's a good way to get folks that have bought into your email permissions, right? They want to hear from you. It's a good way for them to keep in touch for sure. Yeah, why? Why you ask Mr. Evan Pristel? Well, I was just curious because over the pandemic, I started my own newsletter based on the Twitter review platform and I'm up to 70,000 subscribers. That's pretty cool, right? That's awesome. That is craziness. Craziness, 70,000. Well, think about it too. Your reach on social, you have like what, 250,000 to 1,000 per social board? Maybe more now? I don't even know. I haven't checked. It's up there, yes. So if you think about a percentage of all those boards, 70,000, yeah. I mean, I can see you getting that quality subscription list. Wow, that's amazing. Yeah, that's great. Thanks, thanks. I want to hear from you on a regular basis. I'll subscribe, but let's chat to our next guest who's also in this new world of digital. Well, talking about amazing resources for our industry besides Evan's newsletter, I really can't wait to introduce you guys if you don't know already. Our fabulous guest, where we really love to hear from folks like this, people who are moving and shaking our industry with their insights or perspectives in the future of our industry. For sure, our guest Eric Bell today, founder of backstale.com, fits that definition. Welcome, Eric. Thank you. It's great to be here. Yeah, welcome, Eric at backstalebaxtel.com. Looks like you're the Google of data centers. Is that a way to describe you? Yeah, I mean, I guess you could say Google of data centers or perhaps the help of data centers. We want to help people find the right data centers for their needs and provide information for them to make that decision. Fantastic. Well, let's start off walking us through your career and how you came to create backstale.com. Looks like it started as a hobby. Is that right? That's correct. Yeah, so walking through my career and it did start as a hobby project learning how to program. But looking at my career early on, late 90s I was looking for a career change. I had a business degree. I had a few jobs out of college but then took a few computer classes because the internet thing was kind of hot back then in the late 90s. Took a few computer classes, got started in a call center. Within a few months was plucked out by the chief network architect and he wanted to train a few people up from scratch or a couple of people up from scratch. And so really joined their IP engineering backbone team and learned everything on the fly. Did a lot of reading and on the job training. And what that really taught me it was the power of small teams. Small teams being able to affect a lot of change and if you have a lot of people or a small number of people pulling in the same direction you can really accomplish a lot. Over time I transitioned in that role to peering interconnection built out their peering interconnection platform. The way interconnection is simply the way the internet's a collection of private networks. And it's the way those private networks interconnect and they interconnect in various billions around the US and around the world. Anyways, over time I pointed my career towards the customer out of engineering and more towards the customer. So various roles as sales engineering. One of my favorite was a product manager role worked at Equinex as a product manager of interconnection in charge of peering and cross connects and that sort of thing. And then moved on to core site and sales and business development roles there. And so that kind of sums up my career in a nutshell. Effectively started out in engineering and pushing my way towards product and business development. And you certainly have worked at the best of the best in our industry Equinex core site to interview. How has your previous expertise, your experience that you've gathered at these locations really shaped the way back style serves the space today? Yeah, so even though I had the business degree my origin in the industry is in engineering, right? So I appreciate and understand the engineering mindset. That's kind of the way I think, but I also through my last positions in the corporate world were in sales and business development. So it provides a combination of a unique mindset where I understand the sales process but I also think like an engineer. And although I started back style, I think that engineering mindset made me kind of yearn to get back there. So I was a little bit bored with my sales roles. And so doing back style, create back styles as a way to learn programming and yearning to kind of get back and my hands dirty in the technical space. Yeah, so how to fuse the two? I really wanna focus on accuracy within back style, transparency, almost all the information is available at least right now without a login. So it's just publicly available. And so it's creating that transparency. And I wanted, I think back then there weren't many resources. There have been more resources now, but at the time there was only a data center map which a lot of folks use, but ironically it didn't really have a mapping function. It just listed data centers in each metro. And so the information was a little bit stagnant and wanted to provide more tools for that data center buyer to find information because there was information asymmetry. All the information at the time was in the hands of the data center sales team. So I wanted to provide those tools and that information to the data center buyer. And over the years, I've played around with different business models. So for example, last year or the previous years was focused on more of an agency model where we mashed up buyers and sellers. And this year we've been focusing on developing our advertising platform and lead gen tools for data centers. Something really cool about backstale.com it allows you to hone in on specific regions around the world versus limiting it to a city or a state. I'm just online here. And I looked up, for example, my area, the Boston Metro Greater Boston Data Center Market. And there were 47 data center sites. I had no idea there were this many around this area. That's intriguing. But can you comment on some of the regions where you've seen the market really booming? Yeah, so good question. And we have stacked things to be regional specific. So for example, and I'll get to the booming part, but for example, if you're in Boston, you can also see if you go up a level, you can see all the data centers in Massachusetts or you can see all the data centers in the United States. The same thing is true in the way we post news or events. So if you're only interested in data center or events in Boston or events in Massachusetts, you can see those, right? And events are a little bit light now because there's not many in-person events. But from a news perspective, if you're looking for news only in France, you can get that in a way to tailor the news that you receive in the data center industry because I can tell you that there's a lot of news out there and be able to hone in and put some blinders on and just only see the news for what you're interested in. Do the same thing for companies. So if you're only interested in Equinix news or in Volta news, you can see that as well. In terms of areas that are booming, I would say that of course the trend in the last few years has been edgier metros, right? Everyone's talked about the edge and some of it has been promised and some of it has been in reality. So places like Ohio, there's Indonesia or India, those places are moving at a pretty good clip. Connecticut has an interesting up-and-coming story, I think. I think there's some secondary markets in the US that are moving into or growing into primary markets like Phoenix or Hillsborough. They've seen a lot of development recently. It's also, they're curious about how Brexit will impact the UK. In the data center industry, particularly recently through the pandemic, right? There's been so much growth. And so rising tide lifts all boats but you kinda wonder how Brexit's gonna impact the UK. Data center industry going forward. I saw recently, I think back in June, Euronext announced that it was moving from London to Italy as where their data center will be located. I could go on and on. But I think you can't discount the main markets too. I think when you look at satellite imagery over Northern Virginia, there's just tons of development, particularly in Northern Virginia and driven by Amazon and some others. But yeah, there's just massive building even in primary markets. Really is. So with all that information at your fingertips, are you noticing any interesting industry trends that we should be keeping our eye on? I know you talked a little bit about the geo-metros and the Brexit movement impact. And of course Northern Virginia, but anything massive regional focus, but overall industry trends? Yeah, so I think that it may it's no secret that data centers use a lot of resources, a lot of energy and a lot of water. And I'm encouraged, really encouraged recently that there are a lot of data center participants, particularly the hyper, led probably by the hyper scale, but also by some co-location companies announcing green projects. So for example, not only green projects to fund or to to energize certain data centers, building a solar farm or wind farm nearby a data center to support it. And that's been mostly hyperscalers, but also companies making commitments to become carbon neutral by a certain date. And I think that it's something I have a big interest in and I think something you'll see back still start to track more in depth to have a lot of data to help track and support these endeavors. Yeah, absolutely. Awesome, awesome. So Eric, you're based out of Colorado. I love that lamp by the way in your background is, do you live in a saloon in the old West? Is that because I want that lamp, I will pay any amount for that. Ooh, okay, let's talk afterwards. It's very low, it's very low tech for folks who are watching the video, but in all seriousness, so what do you do around Colorado when you're not gunslinging? What do you do in your spare time? Ah, yeah. So we moved out to Colorado in 2007. We moved here because it was warmer, you know, it's surprising Colorado is a little bit of a, as a bunch of people from all over, a lot of people from the South as well. And they kind of looked at me funny when I say I moved here because it was warmer, but it is, right? Moved here from the Wisconsin area. But I, you know, and I think we made a list of places where we wanted to move. And, you know, of course, down the East Coast and a little bit in the West Coast and visit some of those places, but Colorado to me was the best combination of weather. You know, it had, still had tech industry and medium cost of living, but access to fun things to do. So yeah, it's still quite a data center and telecom hub, so you're in the right place. Oh yeah, for sure. There's a lot of headquarters, companies that are headquartered, you know, the two, some of the largest network companies in the world are headquartered here. You know, like level three or Xeo or Lumen, that is level three, but yeah. So and a bunch of medium-sized or small-sized companies in the industry are also headquartered here. But, you know, in terms of things to do, you love to just, you know, ski, which is classically Colorado. And next week, my family's getting together, extended family were coming in to Winter Park, rented a large house and we're all gonna enjoy some of the activities up there. So what are some hobbies that you might not expect when you start to participate again that you love to do? Yeah, so I have three kids that are, you know, most important to me. And so I had my kids only half the time, you know, it was divorced, you know, about five, six years ago. And so you don't often see me sitting down. I like to keep moving and I'm often out doing things and so I must think of myself as being in three different worlds. One is the tech and data center space. So, you know, go to conferences when, you know, as they get rolling again or previously before that pandemic. Second, probably that no one would ever, you know, that worlds don't overlap is love to dance. Yeah, so yeah, exactly, exactly. Yeah, different types of dance and stuff like that. And I'll start out Lindy Hopping back in the day. And Lindy Hopping is a jazz, you know, original jazz dance and love doing that. But, you know, blues dance, just dancing to live music. And a thing called a stag dance is more boldery dance with this kind of solo dance. But yeah, all that stuff. We'll put some videos in the show notes. Absolutely. Okay. I love it. You know, my sister teaches ballroom. And so I grew up like going Friday nights to her studio and taking a ballroom class here and there. And it is awesome. I just love it. Yeah, I love it too. It's like I said, it's, you know, I like to push myself outside my comfort zone. And some, you know, dance originally was that. I was definitely not comfortable. I remember, you know, when I was first learning Lindy Hopping long time ago, I didn't know anything about music. You know, people ask me, do you play an instrument? I'm like, yeah, my iPhone, you know, plays me or Spotify, I play something on fire. That's my instrument. But really, it might be myself, right? You know, I moved to music now. And I remember being in the car to teach myself about time, you know, eight counts or whatnot, you know, just trying to find the beat in music. And now I don't have a problem, but I just had to practice that over and over again. It's an income naturally, but you know, love it now. And then a third area is probably adrenaline sports, right? And this is where it doesn't overlap with the tech or the dance, right? And so I'm in a few ice hockey leagues. I love ice hockey. That one I knew for some reason. That one you knew. I've talked about this before. Yeah, yeah. But it's funny though, because I was expecting ice hockey from, then you came out with dance. And now I'm like, there's no predicting what you're gonna say. I love it. And another thing, one wheel. Like I have a, I don't know if you guys have heard of one wheel. It's probably popular out in LA. It's a self balancing skateboard. It's one large wheel and your platform on both sides. And I love it because it feels a lot like wakeboarding or surfing. And, but the Facebook forums are all filled with like broken collar bones and wrist bones and all sorts of things. Luckily I haven't broken anything yet on the one wheel. Yeah, they speed down here in SoCal by and my dog flips out. So I think my dog's responsible for at least half of those broken collar bones. Right, yeah. It is a little scary when you're being chased by a dog on those things. Cause you can't push it too far cause that's where you do, you know. Just hop off, hop off. I always like, please just hop off. I'm so sorry. That's my dog. Yeah, well, you know what? I'm, I actually might, I have a dog, a new dog, right? And he's very energetic. And so I do run him on the one wheel. So I take it to the next level and run my dog on the one wheel. I need to, I need to get my dog more socialized about that. And I think I'm gonna have to like at least buy a skateboard or something and start out with maybe four wheels and work my way down. When do you people work? All you people are doing is having fun and games here. This is a serious business. We need to be much more. So cool. Oh my goodness. Well, you know, that brings us to the fun, fast, exciting part of our show where we throw a bunch of rapid fire questions at you and you tell us a little bit of something that might surprise us and interesting answer that pops into your head. Evan, you want to kick it off? Sure. You mentioned your developers. So I'm curious, what's your favorite platform on mobile, Apple, Android or BlackBerry? Well, I, Apple, a few years ago transitioned to the Apple ecosystem and you just kind of get sucked in. And I don't mind because it, everything just works together. It's seamless. You know, my phone integrates with my computer which integrates with my pad which integrates with, you know I can show screencast up to my Apple TV. So I don't mind being sucked into the Apple ecosystem. And so I'm assuming on your Apple phone with the app that you use the most? I would say, I mean, outside of the email and calendary and whatever type of stuff it's Google Analytics where I actively track the site's performance all the time. And there's been some times where I've caught, there's been a few things, you know caught in performance problems. You know, say for example when we need upgraded database server like things started to crash a little bit. You know, you can see that early on when traffic kind of tails off or there's a spike, you know a few years ago, actually a few months ago, sorry. We had a spike, OVH had a fire back over in France. The whole data center burned down. You know, earlier this year and we had a spike on Backstall. I was like, what is going on? So it was a way for us to almost see the news as it was coming in. So yeah, I would say Google Analytics and then there's an app that I used to read Hacker News which is kind of a forum with, you know yeah, from the Y Combinator community. So that's something I enjoy as well. Nice, okay. And you're out in Colorado. What holiday does Colorado do best? Like what's your favorite holiday out there? What do we do best? I mean, it's hard to find a Colorado type holiday but I would say people in, I would say this is advice if you're gonna come out here to ski, right? A lot of people wanna come out here to ski and a lot of people come out for Thanksgiving or Christmas to ski. In my opinion, that's way too early. The best known Colorado is later in the year March and April. Oh, nice. The ski hills close down often in mid-April and sometimes you get the best snow afterward. I'm like, no, there's great snow up there, right? Why are they closing down? Of course, it's various reasons but I would say that spring break then in Colorado because it's the best snow on the hills. Awesome, awesome. And what's your favorite food? Favorite, oh, favorite food, ice cream. We do. Ice cream every night, for sure. Jamie might know this but New England has the highest per capita consumption of ice cream in the world. So. They know that I moved so out of New England. Providence, Boston, we love our ice cream. Wasn't Ben and Jerry's started up in the Northwest? Vermont, yeah, I mean, it's all about our ice cream. So wonderful. Well, thanks for joining. It's really fun learning about you, your amazing array of hobbies but more importantly, your incredible mission in opening up the information space in the data center world, very important mission. So thanks so much. Thank you, thanks for having me. And go ahead and tell our viewers if they don't know already, where can folks go to learn more about Backstown? I would say just go to Backstown itself, B-A-X-T-E-L.com or Google it, you'll find it or search for any data center and hopefully we'll be in the top 10 of the results but yeah, thanks. Nice, nice. Eric, thank you so much. And of course, Evan, as always. And folks listening, if you enjoyed today's Data Movers podcast, go ahead and check out more at jsa.net slash podcast. We release data movers episodes every other week on Wednesday morning. So go ahead and check us out there. And follow us on Twitter at JS Goddow and Evan Kerstel where we live and breathe as well. For sure. And as always everybody, happy networking. And I'll see you guys next week. Bye.