 Welcome to JSA TV and JSA Podcasts, the newsroom for telecom and data center professionals. I'm Jamie Scott-Octaya of JSA, coming to you from Virtual Metro Connect 2021. Joining me today, my good friend, Tom Brown, of course, the president and CEO of DataGrid. Tom, welcome to JSA TV. Well, thank you, Jamie. And thanks again for having me today. As always, it's a pleasure. And we're talking about an address that's near and dear to our hearts here, 60 Hudson Street, and DataGrid, a company that is really the heart and soul of that core carrier hotel. Can you tell our viewers, if they're not familiar, a little bit more about DataGrid? Sure, Jamie. DataGrid established in 2011 as the single largest data center here in the New York area. And I will argue that in the metropolitan area, really two things that I'd like to share with our viewers is how DataGrid approaches the market. One, we have robust power infrastructure, which is unheard of in the city of New York. We come to our customers with 15 megawatt power source. And as we see things evolve and trending in 2021, and I'm sure we'll talk a little bit about that in a moment, is that we're seeing a lot more power dense applications, whether it's so autonomous vehicles, whether it's healthcare, remote healthcare, whether it's just the abundance of data consumption, we're seeing more and more power. So we had the good fortune of being able to, separate from the building, be able to provide 12 megawatts fed four feeds from the utility. In addition, this building, and amongst other buildings, is a key aggregation point globally, actually. It's one of the most recognizable addresses in the globe. And what's really interesting is the fact that we always talk about cross-connect burden, the ability to cross-connect seamlessly and effectively with our partners. And that creates a challenge because the cost. And one of the things that we differentiate ourselves is our ability to provide a direct connect product, which directly connects you from your presence to your partner, and we don't charge for cross-connects. There is a fee for the build to it. But what it does is it creates not only efficiency, but also creates a cost effectiveness. And it's really been, we've been recognized by capacity media for the last two years as a change agent in the marketplace. One of the things we did a year ago is we pivoted. We went from a wholesale model. We have two floors, 120,000 square feet. And we've now shifted to a smaller recommended space, being able to accommodate the, what we call now, E-POPs, and we'll talk a little bit more about that as far as trends and concern, where people only need 50, 200, 250 KW as opposed to the larger footprints. Now, will we address some of the larger requirements? Absolutely. But one of the things that we see is the smaller increments of power dense applications here. Oh, I love how you call it E-POPs. That's interesting. I want to get back to that. I also want to talk about the demands you're seeing at 60 Hudson Street and New York City Marketplace, of course, particularly during the pandemic and really how is 2021 looking for data grid? So we're really excited, Jamie, about 2021. Last year, we saw opportunities that we otherwise wouldn't see in our funnel, whether they're coming from large enterprises, whether they're coming from city agencies, whether they're coming from traditional service providers that have really seen that significant boom from the capacity requirements. For example, Zoom Video, who sits within our data center through our partnership with Digital Realty, they doubled their space. You saw some of the CDNs. You saw some of the traditional providers just really requiring additional space. So we're really excited about what lies ahead. We have a couple of interesting opportunities, whether they're sized from 50KW all the way up and including an entire floor. So we're really excited about the prospects of what lies ahead in the demand set. And the demand set is set around really an aggregation point. It's about latency and it's about ability to provide dense power applications. And that's a really specific niche that 60 Hudson Street has now been accustomed to as opposed to some of the other properties that maybe whether it's in New Jersey or even in remote areas of the country. So you're gonna see more and more with these aggregation points. And I'll talk a little bit more about some of the E-POPs that we've heard from our customer requirements, which are smaller dense where you're able to aggregate your traffic and then bring it out and disperse it to some of the larger data center farms. I just, I love that. And that flexibility and to your point earlier, the latency concerns, it really sets you up to be a prime player for the rollout of 5G, the continual rollout of 5G. Can you speak to that regarding data grid? I can. So for the very first time, Jamie, and of course we've always had discussions but we're having material discussions with the wireless providers. Now think about that. Would you ever think that wireless meets wire line and the building like 60 Hudson Street? And really what they're finding as we roll out 5G and we roll out this smart city which it's being deployed right now is that they're in need of aggregation points. And if you think about the island of Manhattan and you think about New York City, what do you think about it, 60 Hudson Street? What we really need is the ability to have more of these aggregation points. So we're working with some of these wireless providers right now to create applications to deploy that. Almost reverse engineer where you have your head and equipment in an aggregation point like 60 Hudson Street and then tether back whether it's a light pole, whether it's a building or a campus within the island of Manhattan via fiber. So we're really excited about working through these different applications here in New York City. We're thrilled about that. That's very exciting and I couldn't think of a better address in the world to be one of those key aggregation points that sort of are reverse engineered, if you will. Love that. And Tom, as a friend of mine for many years, we won't name the years, but many years being a friend of yours, I watched you grow as a thought leader in this wonderful industry of ours. Big fan of your blog, by the way. And tell me what are these top industry trends for 2021 that are coming our way? Well, thank you. I appreciate you recognizing me as a thought leader. But really what you're seeing is a major shift. We're seeing a major shift to the cloud and we're gonna continue to see that. And that's really that the cloud providers are creating these E-Pops in these metro cities such as New York and throughout the globe. We're also seeing a shift to the tier two and tier three cities. How important two or three, four years ago, we wouldn't talk about Columbus, Ohio, for example, as a key market to aggregate traffic. And you're gonna see more and more of these tier two and tier three markets come into play. Think about 2021, we're gonna continue to see the rollout of additional data center space. Just let's take a look at the market here in the United States, for example, Microsoft, they announced that they deployed 280 megawatts and they're gonna continue to deploy that throughout and the other hyperscalers. Under construction, Silicon Valley, 279 megawatts. It's just startling Chicago, 137 megawatts. Arizona, 50 plus megawatts. It's just startling that in 2018, we said, you know what, we hit a plateau. Well, guess what, we doubled that. And if you really take a look at it, it's amazing the fact that this trend is still gonna continue. But we saw the consumption in March just trend up like a hockey stick for the ability for bandwidth. And we're gonna continue to see that. So the capacity and diverse routes is so, so critical because we also have to replace the end of life of some of the legacy networks, right? That just can't handle that. Let's take a step back though. Think about for you at JSA and think about what we need to. You have an outstanding team that has worked remotely since the beginning, but the productivity, and I can't speak for you, but I can speak for us at Data Grid. The productivity that I've seen as we transitioned to remote, you're now, there is no more delineation between home and work. And I'll find myself at midnight, 6 a.m. Whenever it is, you're on your computer and off you go. And the productivity has just skyrocketed and the ability to communicate has been seamless. So I think that trend is gonna continue and that's here to stay as we trend in 2021 because we always talk about, what's happening? What's evolving with 5G? What's happening with some of these new technologies? For example, IoT, right? 42 billion devices will be connected to the internet. That equates to data consumption. That equates to data center space. But we also have to talk about, as us as an environment in a company that's being able to thrive and be successful. And now as we reestablish, and I look forward to seeing everybody at the next trade show, when we reestablish some normalcy, you have to re-identify your culture as a company. So that's a trend that we're gonna see in 2021. So we can really fixate ourselves on what's the exciting trends as far as what's to come from 5G and deployment of networks and diversity. But we also have to think about who we are as companies in really reestablishing our shelf. Is it two to three days a week in the office? Is it one or two days remote? How is that all gonna work? And how's that gonna transpire? And hey, what is the, do we establish a dress code, for example? What's that look like? All of these things that enter your mind when now, hey, we're gonna hopefully towards the middle of the year as everyone gets inoculated that we reestablish a culture that goes back to normalcy. But it's here to stay. And we've created levels of productivity at DataGrid that we haven't seen in years past. I couldn't agree with you more, Tom. I think we've forever shifted in the way we do work and balance work and family and remote working allows for that. And in a way, we've relaxed a bit more like you talked about dress code because we all anticipate, expect kids and pets flying around in the background now. We've certainly seen enough YouTube video of that. But it all goes down to, we've done our jobs. We've created that infrastructure to allow for that bandwidth consumption so people could work, learn, entertain from home. And it's really a testament to the strength of our industry and to places like DataGrid. So thank you for all you do. Where can our viewers go to find out more? So really I had a lot of fun with over the past year is the Interconnect Hub podcast. And we've seen a great deal of progress on that front. Really just bringing leaders of the industry and talking about trends and new technologies. So that's been a lot of fun. So I would ask the audience to take a listen to the Interconnect Hub. And if you are interested in becoming a guest on the podcast, by all means because it's just conversation like you and I are having to talk about what's happening in the marketplace. Of course our website really tells the story about DataGrid and who we are and what we do. I'm a big fan of LinkedIn and social media. Now more than ever, social media and we've transitioned from traditional marketing to a more social based marketing because that's what we have, right? And you got to leverage that. And of course the traditional way of just reaching out to me directly whether it's via email, my phone. I think it's, I always welcome phone calls and the ability to speak about what's happening here. Love it, yep. That's DataGrid.com with a Y on grid, GRYD.com and please absolutely, I'm a big fan. Check out that podcast, it's amazing as well as DataGrid on LinkedIn and other social platforms. Thank you so much, Tom, for your time here. Thank you viewers for tuning in to JSA TV and JSA podcasts. Jamie, it's been a pleasure, thank you. You're welcome. And everybody, Virtual Metro Connect and everyone at home, happy networking.