 Welcome to JSA TV and JSA Podcasts, the newsroom for telecom and data center professionals. I'm Barb Mitchell joining you today from beautiful Honolulu where we're all in person at PTC 2022. And joining me is Michael Lehude, COO of Stream Data Centers and a new member of the team we're introducing to you today, Yvonne Dare VP of Hyperscale leasing and development for Stream Data Centers. Thank you both so much for joining us today. It's great to see, great to meet you, great to see you, Michael, it's been a few years. Three years. Yeah, you've been busy. Been busy. Yeah, and then there's, you know, we haven't been able to be here for a couple of years, so it's really great to see you in person and for all of us to be able to be back together in person. Yeah. So Yvonne, tell us, you've just joined Stream, what caused you, what lured you over, what made you join the team? So many reasons. First off, thanks for having us. I think the team is probably at the top of that answer, just everybody's so approachable, so professional. And when I met the team, my thought with my career was to kind of follow that data center and infrastructure continuum. So if you look at the infrastructure continuum, you've got the pops, the edge, and then as time sort of went on and the industry evolved, a lot of my customers' deployments got bigger, more specialized, more bespoke, and I was really searching for that next step in my career, and I wanted to align myself with an operator that has a reputation and that pedigree of, you know, developing and delivering big, large-scale projects for big customers. So that's what brought me here. Yeah, and I mean, we know Stream well, and we've heard this from so many people consistently. It's the team. Yeah. Maybe you had one exception or so. No. Of course. But, Michael, what does this mean for you when you sort of think about growing your team and thinking about how that's going to benefit the hyperscaler space that you work in? Well, first, I think if my team was here, they would tell you the real reason we brought her on board was she's Lebanese, and I'm half Lebanese. Oh, really? That was the first accusation was I needed a Lebanese person on the team. Well, there you go. But no, in all seriousness. Yvonne comes from a great, not to overuse the term, but a great pedigree of data in her background, with her time at Coresight. Obviously, West Coast Presidents, which is something we were looking to establish with a key team member, but we're just excited about the relationships that she brings to the table, but also the level of holistic knowledge she has in the space. Yeah. So talk about that a little bit. I mean, with all of your expertise, how do you see applying that to this, you know, your work at Stream and the customers within the data center space? Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, the evolution and the career progression has followed what the industry has done. It's really been a handful of really large customers that have evolved over time. Requirements became larger, became more sophisticated. And if you look at the last 15 years where I've spent most of my time, it's been the same customers that I've been dealing with. So when I came over here, it was very important to me that the team, you know, built me into a role and allowed me to bring over the relationships, but also allowed me to build on those relationships. So that's been key. And if you look at the overall structure of Stream, we've got Stream Realty. That's our parent company. The insight that we have through someone like Stream Realty with such a huge background, such a huge amount of investment across the continental US allows us to get into markets and understand where customer demand is strong and have that additional link up on a lot of the operators that are out there. So combining that commercial real estate background with the data center practice, there's a lot of synergies there that I was hoping to capitalize on. And that's exactly what's been happening the last two months. It's been learning so much through that lens. That's so attractive. And it's always so fun, really, to watch Stream. I mean, you guys never miss a beat. You just never slow down. But you would never know there's a pandemic based on the growth at all the great things that you're doing. How's that been for you, you know, navigating all of that? No, it's a fair statement. I think our industry as a whole has only grown during the pandemic. I mean, and it's a little strange saying that, right? Because we don't want the pandemic to be the cause of more success for the industry. But obviously, we've embraced an even more digital world, remote world, which has fueled a lot of the demand. We've just been trying to keep up with the pace of inbound requests, the pace of growth, supply chain challenges, which I know we're going to talk about here. I'm sure it's going to be a question asked. But I think our industry as a whole is as busy as ever. We're as busy as ever. We're going to continue to add people because ultimately you have to have talented people like Yvonne to make things work and they continue to make investments in new markets. And like I said, supply chain investment, expanding existing buildings, you know, all the typical stuff, I mean, probably a lot of my peers have said this week. Well, no, I mean, it's you're exactly right. It's a fair thing to say, right? Where the industry is growing so fast and everyone's trying to keep up and no one really wants to say, you know, thanks to the pandemic. But, you know, it's just the way things have gone, the way trends are going and it's it's it's making everyone busy, right? And so and so that's great. And, you know, I know that Stream has been able to to really adapt to this. And so can you talk about that a little bit on how you've approached this from a supply chain perspective? Absolutely. And that was one of the things that I was so impressed with when I came on board. It was really the construction team that we have, their backgrounds. And more importantly, the supplier relationships that they had in place. And when we came up against these, you know, hard times where you saw significant delays in supply chain, it was those relationships coupled with just a really strong investment and commitment to an inventory program. We have the ability to redirect, you know, components within that supply chain to different locations where priority projects are set to be delivered first. So, you know, that that was really refreshing to see that they thought ahead of that. And then in addition to that, I think there's a huge level of transparency that was really nice to to be able to have those conversations with the customers so that they're always a lockstep with our vision and where we're going with with our programs. And I think sort of to to tie it all together, I don't, you know, to his point, demand is not going away. It's getting bigger and vendors and suppliers and operators and developers have to adapt the supply chain to it. So, yeah. So just, I guess, in closing for both of you, what now? I mean, you're new to the team sort of initial thoughts on, you know, you've already shared quite a few observations, but initial thoughts on kind of where you see things going. And and 2022, we're just just sort of dipping our toes into 2022. What's next? You want to take that one? Yeah, I mean, yeah, these are always fun questions, because there's things we can say, things we can't say. So, of course, and we want you to say it all. They're super exciting stuff, I can't say. No, I'm kidding. No, well, I mean, we're it's no secret. We're I have a large footprint in Texas. We're going to keep expanding that. Chicago, we're going to continue to expand there. Phoenix, we have a very large campus. We'll continue to grow and then we're we're close to announcing an opportunity in northern Virginia, which we're excited about. We were in the market there for for a little bit, but we actually ended up selling the land, which is something we will do. We do sell sell land in addition to offer, you know, turnkey data center space. So I think you'll see us continue to invest in those markets. International is not quite in play for us yet from in least in terms of 2022, but we will start to map out opportunities there. But in general, it's it's it's continued to just double down on the markets we're in. And there we have space in Minnesota, space in Houston, excited about opportunities or client client potential client opportunities in those markets. But really, just US demand is through the roof and we're going to keep supporting our customers here. Yeah, just keep on moving and keeping up, right? Yeah. And adapting and responding and doing all the things that you've done so well. That's right. Yvonne, it's been so great to meet you. We look forward to many more of these chances to see you and to chat with you. And thank you, Michael. And thank you viewers for tuning in to JSA TV and JSA podcasts. Happy networking.