 Welcome to JSA TV and JSA Podcasts, the newsroom for telecom and data center professionals. I'm Jerome Archulim and joining me today is London-based Ross Smith, associate of Vipo Digital. And Ross, welcome to JSA TV. Thanks so much for talking to me. You are basically the next generation. You've been in the industry for a very brief period of time, but a lot has happened since you joined. Let us be that way as well. It's not just jumping into something new, but you've witnessed tremendous change in our space in the last year. Before we get into that, tell us about you and your journey. Where'd you come from and how you got into the industry? Yeah, of course. I'm personally, thank you for having me, Joe. It's great to be joining you. So yeah, initially, so I'm from near Belfast in Northern Ireland. Not many people even know Northern Ireland exists. So to move over to London, it was quite a big step. So a bit in the back story, if I ended up here. My girlfriend had got a job in London after she had graduated university. So I didn't have much say in the matter. It was up to me to find a job and move over whenever she was moving. So I was looking around, not really finding anything that was that interesting to me. My background is electrical and electronic engineering. And I worked in software, firmware development for a tech company in Belfast. So to me, I was like, I don't really know if I want to sit and code for the rest of my life. I don't know if that's where I see myself. So yeah, I saw the ad for Veeba come up. It seemed a bit more social, a bit more access to different avenues and expanding my skillset. So I threw my hat in the ring. And yeah, a couple of months later, I had moved to London and I was headfirst in the data center industry. Well, and I guess it's gone positively. It's been a good experience. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, I wouldn't stop here if it wasn't, that's for sure. Well, it's good to know. Well, good point. It's good to know that the new industry is still coming into it by chance. Because I guess I'll probably say 99.9999% of the people have just landed in the sector. The people they didn't even know existed beforehand. Yeah, absolutely. I've never really heard of people working in the data center industry before. I also knew what they were through my degree. But yeah, it was a shock that when I ended up here myself. Yeah, I had no idea what it was when I started. I can tell you that. I think even then, the sum of the cloud was, I thought it was an actual cloud. That's what people did. But I mean, like I said in the introduction as well, you've witnessed tremendous change. You've noticed it's been a short space of time. The change has been tremendous in the months that you've worked in the sector. What's been the biggest shock or surprise to you coming into it with a fresh perspective? Yeah, that's a really good question. I think for me, just the unprecedented growth that has been seen in the industry, whenever I first joined, it was post, just literally post pandemic of COVID. So thank you. But you joined last month? What year? Right, September. So I think whenever I was in Northern Ireland, we were still in lockdowns over that summer. September 2020. Yeah, 2020. OK, oh yeah, right bang on in the middle. Or was it 2021 actually? I think it was 21. Yeah, about a year ago, yeah. About a year ago, so. So much has happened. It looks like it's been two years. I know, literally feels like two years. But yeah, just the unprecedented growth that we've seen in the industry, even since I joined, because obviously there are still lingering of COVID about. So it was kind of expected that, you know, the industry is still going forward. But then there was talk of, you know, is this a bubble? When is it going to burst? You know, what are your opinions on this? We kept getting asked. And it was really hard to tell at that stage. And, you know, now we're seeing, you know, I don't think there's been any slew down at all in the growth of the industry at all. So yeah, I think that was probably the biggest shock. It's like, wow, this industry is just untouchable right now in terms of growth compared to literally everything else. Yeah, and luckily the bubble never came to be, at least not yet. So it doesn't, you probably know it better than I do. And I don't think there will be that much of a bubble, maybe a slowdown slightly in the next few months, but not so much of a bubble. Talk to you, but I want to talk about the market with you. But before we get there, I think it's fascinating to learn more about your day today, what you do on a day-to-day basis. Talk us through your day, because you were from home, but you also come to London, you're based on, you go out in London, so you have a lot of meetings. So tell us, walk us through your normal day. So yeah, I'll tell you a bit about VivaDigital, who VivaDigital are, and what I do in my day-to-day work. So we're a DC consultancy and advisory firm. So we help our operators and investors to navigate the data center industry. So most of our services are centered around data center strategy and transformation, investment advisory, power consultancy, which is a big one at the minute, and then project management and much, much more with our skill set that we have. So I myself work as part of the technical team. So in my day-to-day, depending on what projects that we're currently working on, I could be doing technical due diligence, PAR studies, connectivity studies. But the one great thing about VivaDigital and this industry as a whole is like, you're never pigeonholed in what you do. So I've also had the pleasure of leading a few projects, so which have nothing to do with technical stuff. So looking at business cases and more commercial sort of work. So being a technical advisor and other things like that. So yeah, my day can be pretty varied between the different roles which I find myself in. And yeah, we're mostly a work-from-home business, although we're looking at getting an office currently. So that's exciting with the growth that we're seeing within the company as well. So I think I was the sixth or seventh person to join VivaDigital. And we're not growing, we're fired to new, younger people than me even. So it's... You're starting to feel old. Yeah, I'm starting to feel pretty old. I think what you said is literally one of the greatest things about these sectors is there's so much happening. You don't have to, I mean, of course you have to focus on what you're doing, which is very important, but you can spread out into other areas and really diversify your role, your job, which makes it all more exciting because every day kind of is different. There's always something new happening. And it's great to hear about the company expansion. I think there's also a mirror of what's happening in the market. There's just so much demand, so much humbleness for more information, for more data, and due to the urgency. And I mean, we know a lot of deals that are going under the table at the moment. So I'm sure you guys are very, very busy. Picking up on all that that you do, so what would you say that's something which is really exciting right now about the market? What's your near-term kind of predictions of where things are going? So at VEPA, we're seeing a lot of traffic in the power consultancy line of work. As you know, there's quite a lot of power constraints, especially in Europe at the minute with the conflict that's been going on. So what that is creating is an inflation in terms of the cost of energy right now. So the access to the capacities which were once available in those 100 MVI plus regions are starting to come a bit more scarce. And you're probably seeing a lot from the hyperscalers in terms of their operational expenditure is just crazy. And I think it was Microsoft were quoting that their $800 million over on their energy costs, which is just ridiculous. So it'll be interesting to see how companies and governments react to the current power market and energy market in general to see how we combat this issue. Maybe near-term we could see a bit of slow in growth, especially from the larger operators like the MetaGoogle, Amazon's, AWS's of the world. But then, yes, so looking beyond that, I think we'll continue to see the growth that we have been seeing in the EU markets, the flat D sort of markets. And then, yeah, what we've also been seeing is a lot more interest in tier two markets. So you're Switzerland, Italy, Nordics, and I think Spain is the best example. The amount of hyperscale activity in Spain and operators trying to get into the Spanish market, especially Madrid, Barcelona, with their abundance of power and connectivity and land as well, big one. I think we'll continue to see that. So I think Spain could become a bit more of a powerhouse in Europe compared to maybe, you know, the Amsterdam's and Paris sort of regions. And then, yeah, of course, we couldn't talk about growth without talking about the Nordics and their ability to maintain their, you know, cheap to see the more energy. And yeah, I'm not going to ESG in this conversation because I feel like I was talking too much currently. I mean, if you feel free to talk about ESG, it's almost a whole new conversation that we can have around that. Spain, it is interesting indeed if they managed to sort out the power as well in the next five years. But I think what you said is kind of in line with what we are seeing and expecting over the next few months, a bit of a slowdown. And it's maybe a more of a readjustment of how things are done and how they're funded as opposed to the bubble bursting as we were talking at the beginning. If you have to choose one market, what's your favorite market they've been working with? Good question. I would find it hard not to say the London market purely because it's, you know... Okay, well, if you can't vote for your own country. Yeah. I think it's just, I like the feeling of, you know, seeing the impact that my work has on the market. First hand, you know, you step out of your door, get in the tube, you can go and see a data center site that you've, you know, for example, done a technical due diligence on, you know, you can say to your family, I've worked on that. I think that just kind of makes me feel don't want to sound self-centered, but it makes me feel special when I can say, look at what I've done. This is nice. And they look at you. Yeah, it's a building. Yeah. It's not my building either. Yeah, like most people do. But one other thing about the London market as well, I love is the fact that despite the constraints on land and power availability in a lot of areas, there's just continued growth and interest in this region. I think London is expected to see like the greatest supply, new supply added, and the greatest demand seen in 2022 versus all other floppy markets. It's quite cool to see. Yeah, it's a very interesting point that you raise actually because we have talked about power struggles in the UK and especially London in this case, the land problem as well. And even just population is not really wanting data centers, but then we still see huge projects being announced in and out of the M25, so it's loud especially. You have these 600 megawatt projects coming to light in the last few weeks as well. It is very interesting. It's still the second or the third largest data center market in the world. And it's a global capital. It's an alpha city. So it's going to be very hard for it to come down as some doom and gloom predicts sometimes. But I was going to ask you, how can people reach out to you and find out more about VEPA? If I mean if anyone needs to do a deligency, how did they get that? Yeah, so obviously connect with me on LinkedIn, Ross Smith, Smith with a Y, which always catches people out. And then yeah, just to plug VEPA digital. So on LinkedIn, VEPA digital with a space in between and our website is VEPAdigital.com. OK, and Ross, if you had to describe your first month in the sector, what word would you use? In one word, sorry. Hectic. I think that's a very good word. There's me or what's happening. Ross Smith, associate of VEPA digital. Thank you so much for talking to me and thank you to our viewers for tuning in to JSA TV and JSA Podcast. And don't forget to check our social channels for more content. Until next time, happy networking.