 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 Data Movers, our fabulous podcast series. I'm your host, Jamie Spada-Cutia, CEO and founder of JSA, along with my amazing co-host, Mr. Evan Pristel, top B2B social media influencer. Hey Evan. Hey Jamie, how are you? Really good, really good. It's an exciting mid-September time. It is, it is, and the Data Movers, it's always exciting because 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 this new normal. So Jamie, September, you know what time that is? I certainly do. My Apple Watch tells me so. It's time for California Streaming by Apple. Yeah, yeah. So if you have your credit card ready, because this is gonna be a pretty big event. Apple Pay, you know it. So we're gonna get new iPhones, obviously, all kinds of cool specs. And I'm most excited about the new MacBook Airs and Pros with the new M1 chip. That's gonna be super exciting. You're all in on Apple, right? I mean, everything, everything. My watch, my phone, my computer. Yeah, I've had, you know. Typical Californian, typical Californian. But this is gonna be a big one. We might see glasses. We saw Facebook launch their new video glasses today. And we're gonna see a new Apple Watch maybe with like a blood pressure monitor or other sensing. So interesting times. And we have a good guess because something needs to power all of this amazing technology, right? That's right, that's right. Let's get right to it. We have one of the true innovators in our data center industry. Today we welcome West Swenson, CEO of Nova Data Centers. Hey, everybody. Welcome, West. So I was doing a little bit of research before this podcast, which is unusual. Usually I don't do any research. But in this case, you know, looking at your bio, it's kind of unbelievable. I see Phillips here. I see WordPerfect, Novell for you old folks like myself, Sonic Wall, BlackRock, WillTech, HireView. I mean, M-Star, Canopy Ventures on and on and on. Tell us about this amazing journey through the world of technology and how you got started with Nova. Well, it's a long story, but I'll keep it short. But basically right out of high school, I've always had just a great affinity for tech, gadgets. Just in general, I love tech. And right out of high school, while going to college, I was working at NB Phillips in semiconductor manufacturing. And this is long before it moved overseas. This is in the really old days when it was done here in the United States. And that in itself was really kind of the beginning for me that it created a foundation in manufacturing, con bonds just in time manufacturing, quality control, statistical process control. And I use all of those things today to build data centers. And through that, I then joined WordPerfect, which is very old school, word processing, desktop software. That was acquired by Nobel. And I went from WordPerfect into sales operations at Nobel, then jumped over with a friend of mine, Ron Heinz, over to Phobos and Sonicwall, then over to Forum Systems, where I was the CEO there. That was sold, went to Signal Peak and Canopy Ventures as an entrepreneur in residence. And at that time I was looking at three or four companies. And I've been through all of these software, desktop software, rackman, and appliances. I'd always sold software or equipment to data centers that never actually ran a data center. And Signal Peak had a company called Center Seven that was kind of a quasi-managed service provider with some data center space. And I just had a really big affinity for it. And I have a pretty good aptitude for different markets. And I just love the tangibility of data centers. And to be honest, I was pretty burnt out from enterprise software and security software. And not that I'm a cabinet maker or a craftsman, but data centers for me are that kind of physical side of technology. And I just love it. And I've been in the space for now over 15 years since then. And so that's a little bit of my background, pretty versatile. I've been through venture capital firms and I've been on both sides of it. So I have a pretty good idea of what investors need, clients need. And I'm always on the innovation side. I did not come from the real estate industry. So I'm not jaded. I don't really, I don't fear innovation. I actually embrace it and I like change. And I feel like this industry is actually really ripe for disruption. Absolutely. And boy, disruption, innovation, change, definitely words I would use to describe your Nova's flagship data center that you are currently building. That's in West Jordan, I believe in Utah on your Salt Lake. I'm hearing some pretty cutting edge features are going into this beautiful campus. Everything from design, drone and robo dog facility, monitoring, just unbelievable technology. Can you tell us a little bit more? I can, yeah. So this is in partnership with CIM Group who are my main investors out of Los Angeles. They've really given me kind of a clean palette to paint from. And this is something I've been building up to for 15 years to really design West's vision of what a future data center looks like, something that would have a 20 to 30 year life to it that could be built in 2021 and still just as relevant in 20 or 30 years. So it's done in a way that will anticipate or adapt to the future as much as possible. So I have the typical cornerstones of power connectivity but then we've taken some things to a new level. It is on a 100 acre campus. We plan 1.5 million square feet. So it will be the largest by far in Utah. And it's really designed as a data center campus versus just an individual building. And we've really anticipated the future growth of compute. And I should probably say my view of the market is when I got into data centers 15 years ago, I kind of felt like it was in a toddler stage. I mean, today the internet's about 30 years old as we know it. So it was about half as old when I got into this space. And I felt like it was in a toddler space. But today I consider it still quite infant. And I know that sounds crazy for what we do. But I think just like Evan was mentioning the glasses, watch seven, anything like that, just the number of apps and the interconnectivity. I just ordered a bird feeder the other day that has a camera and sound detection. And it'll take a picture of the bird, identify the bird, play the sound back to you, right? I mean, those kinds of things, they weren't around 15 years ago. So you just think of where compute is gonna go and it can only go up. We're gonna store that data. We're never, I don't know the last time I deleted a big bucket full of emails. It's just, I just don't do it. I just keep everything. And that just creates more demand for data centers. Plus we have latency issues. We will have more autonomous driving. I mean, I could go on and on, but I just think the amount of compute that we're gonna do over the next 30 years is gonna make the first 30 years look really dwarfed and very small. So in that, we've anticipated this large campus. And this is really a clean slate to do something very purpose-built. It's not a conversion of another site. This was a hundred acres of previous farmland that we have taken over. Purpose-built, what do I mean by that? So the, we have an 80,000 foot corporate, square foot headquarters. That is, I would consider class A plus. It is, it's a work of art, quite honestly. It looks like a symphony hall. Again, my vision, I wanted a Asian Scandinavian minimalism in the design. It has floating roofs. It has tons of amenities like a gym, which will have a couple of F1 simulation racers, golf simulators, a lot of amenities at this site because the clients and ourselves are there. But the data center itself, such as the walls. So in Utah, we're in a cold, high altitude desert. The walls, I built 14 inches thick, eight inches of concrete, four inches of foam, and two more inches of concrete, trying to create a high insulating value so that I can control the climate within the data center. It's not unusual for us to go up or down 30 degrees, you know, in a few hours in Utah. So, you know, things like that, we're doing five foot raised floor. People ask, why do you raise floor versus slide long grade? Well, you can, if you're doing raised floor, you either need to trench the concrete or you need to build, you know, something to support it from above. In this case where we're a multi-tenant data center, we have to kind of build for the most often average use cases. And this gives us more flexibility. We really focus on a design that allows us to provision power to a client in two to three days versus two to three months or two to three weeks. So this allows us to keep a really clean design. We're doing AquaTherm, which is a polypropylene product to run our water cooling system, where most people do steel. That has a 30 year life, just things like that, that I would just say this data center has zero compromises in design. And it is really, it is built for high density, low density. We can do N and plus one, two N. We have a really flexible electrical architecture. We have a substation on site that can go up to 180 to 200 megawatts. And even that is pre-planned and an intelligently designed where it's internal to the campus. You can't actually get to that substation from any outside area. You have to, it's within the campus. There are teenagers or notaries in parts of the country is shooting those transformers out and just things like that. We take a lot of precaution in that. And those robo dogs keeping those teens away, I bet. Yeah, so robo dogs. Yeah, so a couple of things that we have kind of ventured in is robotics and drones. So this is a 100 acre campus, completely fenced. The robo dog from Boston Dynamics has been in partnership with BYU university engineering department. We've been programming that dog to run missions within the data center. So it is programmed to walk around, recharge on its own. It's equipped with cameras, hot and cold detection, LiDAR, FLIR. So it will rock, walk around the data center and monitor the equipment for us and check in. It can also watch analysis from one keypad to another. It's also been equipped with voice enablement where it actually goes back to the database and if it recognizes a person, it checks with the database that that person or employee should be in the data center and it will actually say their name. It'll say good morning or hello. We did that to make it slightly less dystopian. When this dog is walking around, it can be quite shocking. Eventually, as Boston Dynamics upgrades that dog, we will add arms to those dogs and they'll be able to open data centers for each other, the doors and scan badges to go in and out of doors. So that's a really cutting edge thing that we're trying. We also have an autonomous drone that sits in a weatherized container in a very secure area on the campus and it automatically launches on missions and does perimeter security. It's also equipped with floor so it will monitor the data center for hot and cold spots, water leaks. It can detect people. Today, you can also, you'll see it with fence vibration. If we get any vibration on a fence on the sensor that's greater than the wind velocity, the drone automatically takes off, goes and investigates it. It can do infrared. It's a really, really something and it just comes back. This vestibule opens, it lands and it recharges through its feet. So it's really stuff like that. I couldn't have done 10 years ago but it's a lot more approachable today. So those are just a few things that we're doing. Wow, amazing. Sounds like a tech geek's nirvana between the leading edge data center tech, the drones, the robo dogs, the clean air skiing in Utah. Man, sounds fabulous. So one of my favorite futurists, Daniel Burris talks about anticipatory leadership or skating to where the puck is going to be, not where it is. Can you elaborate on the kind of industry trends that you have seen that you're looking to leverage, kind of shape your plan to build out your position as a leader at NOVA's data center? Yeah, a couple of things. I mean, so in Utah, you know, because this is a high cold desert, so we're no for our powder smell. And that's because as the storms come across, right? The humidity drops over the range. When that snow drops, it's low humidity snow. Those same geological aspects here play into how we have always approached data centers. So at NOVA, we practice waterless cooling design. So we do not use any evaporative or water chilling systems to cool our data center. So it's all done through ambient air. You know, you were just talking about it, this nice cool cold air. We use that to cool our data centers. On days that it's too hot, we have a refrigerant system and a closed loop system that does not have any evaporation. So, you know, we are really big about sustainability. I would say it's one of our foremost issues. So waterless cooling design and also renewable energy. So all of our data centers will be on 100% renewable. We are trying to reduce our impact to the environment. So, you know, I can't stress that enough if what I believe is true on the amount of compute and how it will grow, data centers will continue to be resource intensive. Whatever we can do to offset that, even our data center, when it was built with tilt up concrete, we made sure that was coming from local vendors to keep our carbon footprint down versus precast. Things like that we're really conscious of. We try to use as many local providers as well as U.S. manufacturers. The race floor is U.S. manufactured. Again, it's reduced that footprint as much as possible from an environmental impact. So we have anticipated that for years that it's not just droughts and water shortages, but when you do water design, it's also the wastewater that you put off from the facility that has to be handled. And, you know, we would just rather avoid that. We would rather go through a bit more tech, maybe a little bit more expense on the front end to reduce any environmental impact. I'm in awe. You know, I was just on another podcast, Data Center Hawk, and we were talking about what is the future of data centers and truly I listed you. I said, you know, we need to use technology to help reduce our carbon footprint. You know, I'm a big fan of what you're doing here. It's so critical. And I also love that you're committed to U.S. manufacturing as well, you know. You know, and it just feels like it's such an important part of your DNA, your commitment to Utah, your commitment to Western U.S., and talk like that, and also to America in general. Yeah, thank you. I mean, so in the West, we feel like there's still a real window of opportunity out here because we don't have the populist centers that they do in the East or Southeast. I guess my vision for it, and Evan touched on it, anticipating, so if compute grows like I think it will, how do we anticipate that? My belief is that there will be some applications that require really low latency, right? So if it takes 300 milliseconds to blink, and we can move data at 10 to 20 milliseconds anywhere in the U.S., there will be applications that require it at even, you know, one to five millisecond speeds. So latency plays into it, but beyond just latency, if the amount of compute grows, people will be chasing lower total cost of operations in general, it will become a competitive advantage for most enterprises to reduce their cost of compute. If it grows exponentially, you've got to reduce that cost. The costs in the West in general are lower, but the challenges in the West, like in Utah, Nevada, other places as we have regulated utilities, we have a scarce resource in land. You'd think there's a lot of land, but around fiber intersections, it's not as planful as we think. In Salt Lake Valley, you know, we live in a bowl, right? The Wasatch Bowl. And so land is kind of limited by the mountains here. So in some areas of the West, land is also scarce, but we think companies are gonna have to chase lower total cost of operations. Over time, they're gonna be less sensitive about, or what I should say is the old server huggers will become less sensitive about where the compute is located versus what it costs, and it's resiliency to disasters, sustainability. I think it will become a more holistic buy rather than the early evolution of data centers, which were really concentrated around large metro areas with population. It was the path of least resistance, but with the amount of compute growing, I just, I think that's like the popularity of Phoenix, Hillsborough, Las Vegas, Salt Lake. And I consider the top seven markets in the West to be Salt Lake, Las Vegas, Denver, Phoenix, Hillsborough, LA and San Francisco or the Bay Area. I consider those to be the top seven Western markets, and those are all really big targets for us for expansion. Awesome. Well, Utah is a great state, lots of reasons why people are moving there from around the country in California, and packing up and moving to Utah, just a gorgeous place to live. So what are some of your favorite things to do around the state in your spare time, free time? Well, I love to travel, but, you know, the nice part about Salt Lake is we're about maybe five and a half hours to Las Vegas, about four and a half hours to Yellowstone, just the other day I took my kids up to do some fossil digging up in Kemmer, Wyoming, couple hour drive. Oh, well, do you find anything? I did, lots of, it's about a 50 million year old fossil bed and lots of fish, lots of fish, and turtle poop, turtle poop, it's kind of cool. But I really, I love the outdoors. I think that is really kind of the, I would say the key aspect of living in Utah is outdoor recreation. You can go skiing, hiking, boating, you know, ATVs. You can go to the Red Rock Desert in a few hours down the Moab. I mean, we boast five national parks in the state, Bryce, Zion, or to you name it, it is just, I would say that's right, to live here, that's kind of a cornerstone of living here, but I'm just a huge outdoors enthusiast. So you name it, I'll try it, but my big focus is generally cycling, and that would be mountain biking, fat biking in the winter or road cycling. So that's my big passion. Gosh, I love, I just love talking to you, Wes. I just, you always open my mind. So this actual, this section that we're getting to our rapid fire section is gonna be fun, I'm sure. We're just going to pound you with a couple of fast questions and just say the first thing that comes to mind, so. Do my best, do my best. Here we go. Favorite food that would surprise us? Black licorice ice cream. That is a good one. That sounds disgusting, I must say, but okay, we'll let you have your, your. I love black licorice ice cream. It's very hard to find, but I love it. I can't imagine why it's hard to find. So one word that people would use to describe you? You know, I am a pretty laid back guy, but I think a lot of people think I'm intense, so. I would say innovative, that's. Innovative, yeah, innovative for, and determined I would say it's probably another, probably good descriptor. Oh, good work. All right, so apple or android? Apple all the way, full apple. There's no Apple commercial today. There's no escaping my apple idea. Next week is gonna be an expensive week for you. So looking at the first page on your iPhone, what's the app you use the most? Oh, I would say probably Instagram, but I have other than, you know, the typical stuff, email and stuff, but I'm a huge design nerd, so I follow a lot of architectural design forms, you know, from Manati in Italy to architecture in Colorado. I'm a huge design fanatic and an art fanatic, you know, so I love modern art, classical art, so I'm a huge museum buff. So that's my big, my probably my guilty pleasure in what I use the most beyond the typical business apps. I noticed that, I was looking at pictures of your new facility and it's beautiful. I mean, from the, obviously the data center side is cool, but just the building and the work spaces and the, it's just amazing to see, so I encourage folks to go check it out. I think so, it's really tasteful, but it's very modern and with a lot of just textures, black marble, bookmatch marble, wood. I mean, it is really, it's done to, I guess, my vision. And I want the complete experience for my clients. Sounds like Jamie's house, but also very tasteful when I've seen her background. I think you're right. Well, thanks so much. I want Wes to come over and do some decoration here. I don't know about that. I'm not saying I'm good at it, but I know what I like, so. Well, thanks so much for joining us, Wes. It was really intriguing to hear about your blending of data center technology with advanced emerging tech like drones and sustainable tech and sensors and robot dogs. I mean, this is really something to see, so can't wait to follow all your progress. Right, thank you. I appreciate it. Really setting data center campus construction up to become an art form. So we are so excited. Can't wait for the open house. Thank you so much, Wes. We appreciate you. And viewers, listeners, if you enjoyed today's Data Movers podcast as much as I did, be sure to check out jsa.net slash podcast for upcoming Data Movers episodes. Every Wednesday morning, we drop another podcast. And give us some ratings and reviews. We would love that. So we need a few more ratings and reviews. And then follow us on Twitter, J.S. Goddow and Evan Kerstel. And as always, guys, stay safe and happy networking. Awesome, thank you.