 Welcome to JSA TV, the Newsroom for Tech and Telecom Professionals, and JSA Radio, the Voice for Tech and Telecom on iHeart Radio. I'm Jamie Skado-Kataya of JSA. And here standing at West 7th Center, the data center, first purpose built data center of Los Angeles, right here downtown LA with my good friend, Mr. Arman Kalili, the CEO and founder of Evocative. Arman, welcome to JSA TV. Hi, Jamie. Thanks. Thanks for having me. Thank you for having us here in your beautiful facility. And we should also mention you are a true thought leader in the Colo field, a serial entrepreneur, the founder of multiple network infrastructure companies such as Central Colo and United Layer, the largest privately held Colo provider in San Francisco, Sirius, one of the first ISPs in Silicon Valley, and Music Bank, the very first music subscription company. So amazing accomplishments there. You're certainly an established entrepreneur here in the Colo space. And so tell us, what led you to start Evocative? Sure. I mean, you know what they say about serial entrepreneurs, right? That means they're seriously not employable. That's exactly what serial entrepreneurs mean. Yeah, I mean, I've pretty much started my career straight out of college, started at first ISP and what next thing leads to another, and we become the largest independent ISP. And then I started, you know, secure email company. And after that, music company and Colocation company and joined a private equity firm. And then after that, started a Colo company, bought a DDoS mitigation company, sold it. And during this whole period, you know, and I got married and I had kids. So thanks. By far, probably best, you know, accomplishment so far. And stayed home for about a year, helping my wife with our first born, Leon. And after about a year, it was time to go. She kicked you out. I'm not sure who kicked who out, but I read the signals quite well. And that's why I started Evocative. I love that story. That's the truth, and I'm sticking to it. I'm married to a serial entrepreneur. I get it. I totally understand. I'm like, retirement is what, six months now, what's next cooking in that mind of yours? I know. It's the, it's, it's quite the, I'm not sure it was a technical word, but I think doctors refer that ADHD. Very true. And for sure, Evocative is a growth story. So tell us, what is behind Evocative's growth? What's driving that? Initially, you know, I wasn't, I wasn't a hundred percent sure I wanted to kind of get back into the field, because obviously things have quite changed the past two decades. And did some research, spoke to a few friends in the industry, and came to the conclusion that what still is missing in the sector is that independent, service-oriented, and customer-focused provider, with key emphasis on the word service, because we are in the services industry, regardless of the product or services that you provide, whether it is Kolo, Cloud, Hosting, whatever it is, it's about service, it's about taking care of your client. With that premise in mind, Evocative got started. And as a matter of fact, we are almost a year into it, we are 12 months into it. And today we just made our fourth acquisition. So we'll get to hear about it on Tuesday, we get the press releases out. So Evocative really is about the story of an independent service provider that is out there taking care of his clients, growing rapidly through both acquisition and organic growth, with the core emphasis on customer-first. Customer-first, absolutely. And definitely when you're driven by this customer-centric core philosophy, it only leads to growth, it's critical, really. So how long have you worked with the West 7 Center team, as well as the rising realty partners who own the building? So we actually, it's funny enough, I used to co-locate in this building in year 2000. So about 18 years ago. So we had known about 1200 West 7 for a long time. And after rising bought this real estate, we knew some of the key C-level people. And we started the dialogue and really liked what we were hearing about what the plan for the building was, specifically what the plan for the data center section is, and what rising wanted to do with the site. So it was more first philosophically in culture where we were aligned, and when the opportunity presented itself, we certainly were very excited to partner with Rising to do this. Unbelievable. And so tell us about your overall data center solution here at Evocative. So we have facilities in Emeryville, California, San Jose, Los Angeles, LA1 and LA2. And we just opened up Reston in January, Virginia. And the acquisition, which I cannot talk about, we just acquired Cyberverse, that is a LA-based company with facilities at 600 West 7. So you're breaking news here on JSA TV. This is breaking news, that's right. It will be live on Tuesday, so. We'll make sure it gets posted on Tuesday. So we just made that acquisition now with Cyberverse, we have facilities, additional facilities in LA and also in Phoenix and Plano, Texas. So we've got a national footprint now. We've got a world-class roster of Fortune 500s, also a couple of guys in a garage. So we are an entrepreneur. We started the company. My first ISP was in a garage, so we have a personal affection towards startups. That doesn't mean we treat all customers regardless of their size equally. So Silicon Valley of you, starting it up in the garage. Well, yeah, the rent was cheap. So you chose West 7 specifically. You knew the rising management team. You were into their philosophies and how they're going to build a better building, taking already the existing assets and enhancing them further. And so this is sort of the evocative home, if you will, particularly in the LA area. Yeah, this is our flagship service product line in LA. 1200 West 7th, or West 7th is the premier data center in Southern California. Just the sheer size of it, the mechanical, the electrical infrastructure is second to nine. It is by far a top ten building from a just pure infrastructure perspective. Of course, having a major presence in LA, LA is still considered a very large metro from an edge computing perspective. So you got almost 14 million residents. So regardless what transpires with mega data centers that are happening in cheaper sites outside of California because of cost of power, electricity and real estate would have you. The need for edge computing still resides and this is by far, arguably this is, I mean, obviously I'm slightly biased, but this is the best data center from an infrastructure perspective. And it's rivals that of some of the major carrier hotels. And disaster recovery sites. We're sitting, I believe what, is it like 30, 40 feet under the ground? So it's three levels of basement, all of it on the ground. The building had spent over $30 plus million building out. It's electrical and mechanical infrastructure. It's all on an M plus one basis. True M plus one, if you know what I mean for the technically inclined ones. It's got multiple grids coming into it, multiple power feats. It's got multiple generator, M plus one generator. We are M plus one on the UPS, M plus two on the cracks in this case. So it really is a mission critical facility. Love that, love that. And one last question, which I like to throw to my CEOs who are here in the hot seat, if you will, on JSA TV. Looking into your crystal ball, where do you see a bucket of heading in the next 12 to 24 months? Obviously, further expansion in terms of both organic growth and acquisition, we're looking for international expansion and also increasing our product line. So we kind of view of having a flagship facility within what we call a five to 10 millisecond radius of large metrocytes. So we've got Silicon Valley covered LA, we have Virginia now, we have Phoenix, we have Texas. So additional sites such as Chicago, New York area, and of course internationally. So we're looking for opportunistic expansion with the core emphasis of being customer focused, quite simple. And your URL, evocative.com, awesome. Well, thank you so much for being here and for being so generous with your time and insight and thank you viewers for tuning in to JSA TV. Happy networking.