 Welcome to JSA TV where we're covering the latest stories, trends, and innovations from leaders in global connectivity, real estate, and the networks within. Buffy Harakitas of JSA and joining me today is the one and only, Lee Kirby of Salute Mission Critical. He was also the keynote speaker for today's opening keynote session here at Data Cloud USA. Lee, welcome. Thank you, Buffy. Yeah, we're honored to have you here today and in case you don't know, Salute Mission Critical is a leader in providing military community services to data center operators globally to help fill positions. Can you tell us a little bit more about that? You bet. Salute Mission Critical runs data center services for companies in 14 countries and we do projects in over 180 countries. We deal with military precision because we recruit from the military community and we've built our procedures to use the best practices from both the military and the civilian community, and that's why we've had such phenomenal growth and now are over 1,000 employees. We started recruiting just from the enlisted ranks, but have gone through senior NCOs and now into the officer ranks as well. So it's had a phenomenal success story that we hope will be an example for the rest of the industry to emulate. Yeah, can you talk to us a little bit more about the challenge of recruiting talent in our industry and how you see the military community being a part of the solution and why? You bet. With the military specifically, what we've done is we've had thousands of people come through our ranks and move on to the industry and so many of them did not even know we exist. So I think a lot of it is awareness in the military community. Our industry needs to get more aggressive and that's why about five years ago, we formed a strategic initiative with Infrastructure Masons and started the Armed Forces Community. So we reach out to military bases and try to get the military community to even know we exist so that they can make a choice. The unemployment problem with veterans has gone away with the economy back in full swing, but there's an under-employment problem and we want to get veterans out there that are moving furniture and making sandwiches to know that there's an opportunity that they could latch onto in our industry and have a great financially and personally rewarding career. So it's all about raising awareness in my opinion. Yeah, I agree. And it's so wonderful all the things that you're doing for the military veterans and how they can really help bring the data center industry together. Exactly. And there's a hidden gem that if you don't mind, I'd like to mention this. I'm always saying veterans. But when I say that, I also mean the entire community veterans and military spouses. A lot of people overlook that the military spouse is changing careers every two to three years. And that adaptability makes for a great employee. And if people will look at all of the spouses on active duty and try to capture that resource pool, too, at Salute, we've got military spouses working around the world and they can continue their career as their spouse changes jobs and moves. They can change jobs with us and move. And by tapping into that resource pool, they expand the amount of people that they can bring into the industry. And I think with the effects of artificial intelligence and the increased demand we're going to have for resources looking across the board of veterans, military spouses and the entire community will be important for us as an industry. Well, you said the word or the acronym AI, artificial intelligence. We've been hearing it all day, all night, last night. I'm sure we're going to be hearing it for much more time to come. But specifically AI and how it's being integrated into facility management. Can you talk to us a little bit more about that? And the work of your onsite team and what they're doing when it comes to AI? Absolutely. The exciting thing everybody's talking about is the demand side of things. But what I'm seeing is the capability side. Artificial intelligence is being integrated into the systems. We're seeing pilots going on with autonomous drones that are going and doing the rounds and reads. And that data is being uploaded into the AI systems to be able to trend out data that used to take us weeks or months to be able to do and we've got that automatically. And it's being able to look at training and shift schedules and do that kind of analysis that would take a human just hours to do. And it doesn't a matter of seconds. So AI is going to drive demand, but it's also going to drive capabilities so that we can keep up with that demand. So I'm excited for what it's going to do for facilities management over the next five years. And when you look at it, another pitch for the military community, who's got better experience with AI and drones than the military community to bring into this industry. Absolutely. I'm doing doing great things with salute, missing critical. It's such an honor to have you here today. Is there anything you want to add? No, I just am appreciative of everything JSA is doing to help raise visibility. And we get this out to the military community and get them coming into our industry. I think it helps everybody increase their capabilities. It certainly does. And thanks again, Lee, for joining us here for another episode of JSA TV. Thank you, viewers, for joining us. Stay curious, stay connected and happy networking.