EdgeCore Digital Infrastructure Built For ‘Exponential’ Growth, New President Tells CRN
‘I think the key to making sure that we delight our customers is repetitiveness and consistency ... that’s one of the things that I’ve discovered to be kind of the secret sauce to continuing the work of these hyperscalers,’ EdgeCore Digital Infrastructure President Steve Conner tells CRN.
Conner, an engineer whose resume includes stints at Nutanix, Arrow and Vantage Data Centers, discussed his vision and strategy for the company as it starts ambitious hiring plans to meet the growth that is coming into the market.
“We’re going to continue to focus on traditional hyperscalers and also spend a decent amount of energy on those ones that are providing an ecosystem service that is complementary,” he told CRN. “When we look at the chip manufacturers, they are starting to buy capacity at pretty substantial clips. When you start looking at people that have bought those chips, specifically GPUs, they’re starting to look at data center capacity at a pretty substantial clip.”
[RELATED: EdgeCore Digital Infrastructure Gears Up For Big Growth]
In terms of buildout and hiring, Denver-based EdgeCore has projects underway in Phoenix and Reno, Nev., which will add hundreds of megawatts of capacity to its existing system, and has plans to double the number of employees.
“Where we’re focusing right now, and where you’re going to see a lot of that growth, is on the operation side,” Conner said. “We want to make sure that for our customers we give them a consistent service, whether we’re in Phoenix or Ashburn, [Va.], or Reno, [Nev.]—pick your place.”
EdgeCore was acquired by private equity firm Partners Group in 2022 for $1.2 billion. The private equity firm invested an additional $1.9 billion into the company last year to fund expansions across its existing locations.
Talking with CRN a week after he was named the company’s first president, Conner called out the importance of power planning, sustainable energy mixes, the growing adoption of liquid cooling and the need for data centers to support AI.
Prior to joining EdgeCore, Conner was CTO at Vantage Data Centers. He was also director of service provider sales at Nutanix, and vice president of technology innovation at Arrow Electronics. Conner said he plans to lean on his experience inside large tech companies as well as his 20 years of volunteer work in leading scout troops.
“It takes that unique way of working with people,” he said of the work. “It’s not on my resume, but it comes along, and it’s just being able to bring people together and say, ‘Hey, look, we’ve got a great idea. Let’s work together. It’s kind of like setting up a campsite. If everybody’s working together, we can get it done.”
Here is more of Conner’s conversation with CRN.
EdgeCore has been growing so fast, and the data center space hasn't slowed down. Why did you join EdgeCore at this moment, and can we get a little bit of your vision for it?
I’ve known [EdgeCore Digital Infrastructure CEO] Lee [Kestler] for a long time. So the team at EdgeCore—there are people here that are new to me, but there are also a lot of people that I’ve known for some time in the industry.
I think the first thing that drew me to EdgeCore is the culture. I think at the end of the day, they’ve done a great job of building a great nucleus up to the point where I joined.
I really appreciate companies that kind of bring every person along for the ride. I think that starts with Lee Kestler, but it goes right down through the rest of the leadership. So when I was talking with everybody, including the people at Partners Group, that was a huge draw.
The other thing to your point, I don’t see buying slowing down. I know that some of the hyperscalers are pulling back a little bit, but I think that’s just more of a course correction because of different relationships than anything else. And one of the things that EdgeCore has done that really excited me is they’re building to demand, not waiting for demand to catch up.
And there’s not a lot of businesses in the community right now that are doing that. So there we’re placing some bets. There’s some cool design things that we’ve done along the way that I believe helps future-proof our positions.
But there’s a lot of companies right now that are looking for shorter delivery time frames, and EdgeCore is positioned to do that.
So, great people and great platform with delivery times, with additional land positions that worked really good in core markets. How do you not make that jump?
When you talk about being ready to meet the growth, how did EdgeCore accomplish that? Is there a culture element that drives that? Or is it something else?
I think it’s kind of twofold. Culturally, EdgeCore has been looking toward AI. It’s allowed the company to actually pay very close attention to future positions from a technology standpoint.
So where you have some companies that are dealing with it and struggling with it, EdgeCore is coming at it from,day one. So I think that in itself is going to position the company, and has positioned the company, to go from basically zero to exponential in a time frame that is pretty quick.
It is cultural, but it’s also focusing on where they were in the market. Where we are currently in the market? And how we can address these future needs, specifically around AI? So that’s kind of my take on the world. Sometimes it’s good to be on the cutting edge, not the bleeding edge.
The geography in terms of the competitive places to put a physical data center has obviously changed going back a few years, and EdgeCore has projects underway around the country. Can you talk about some of the planning that goes into selecting a location for an EdgeCore data center?
To your point, you had Hillsboro, [Ore.], Santa Clara, [Calif.], and Northern Virginia, that's probably five or six years ago, and as the core cloud has evolved, that’s allowed for the expansion of other markets.
But power has driven us to other places as well, and now AI gives us more flexibility about the proximity to different things in that core cloud. So that’s allowed us to look past the Santa Claras, the Restons, the Ashburns and the Hillsboros of the world.
Now we're talking about Austin, [Texas],, San Antonio, Atlanta, Chicago, Phoenix. Now, we’re in Reno. I think the key thing there is, one, can you get to them from a networking standpoint, or does it make sense to stand up those networks? That’s why those new regions are popping up.
And two, do you have the right population to support that? You probably can’t go and build a data center in Midland, Texas, or something like that, where there’s just not all that many people. But those advancements in technology are really allowing the hyperscalers to take a view of the world that says, ‘Maybe I can spread out a little bit and make it such that it works for my business.’
That’s what I've seen over the last few years. AI throws a wrinkle into the equation, which makes it even easier to spread out, if that makes sense.
EdgeCore has a really aggressive hiring plan. It looks like it plans to double the workforce, which takes a lot of strategy and execution. What are your plans for that, and how do you plan to manage it?
You’re right. We are looking to bring on a lot of staff. We made some strategic decisions around how we want to operate our data centers and make sure that we’ve got EdgeCore people that are actually doing the design, build and ultimately operations of the company.
Where we’re focusing right now, and where you’re going to see a lot of that growth, is on the operation side. We want to make sure that for our customers we give them a consistent service, whether we're in Phoenix or Ashburn or Reno—pick your place.
From a growth standpoint, you’re going to see a lot of that out of us this coming year. On the operation side, as we move forward into the next 12 months, we’re going to continue to bolster our engineering capabilities.
I think in order to stay ahead of the curve, you’ve got to be on the curve. So we want to make sure that we’ve brought in engineering talent that’s both customer-facing and then also construction-facing or back-end-facing.
And then lastly, I think a lot of people lose sight of the fact that these buildings are technical things. They have a life to themselves. So we are investing in the, I’m going to say, the ‘infrastructure,’ which will be more the logical infrastructure, and the people that support that to make sure that we can meet the needs of all of our customers.
Outside that, obviously we’re going to need a lot of support, people that are going to come in and basically fill in the blanks from an SG&A standpoint and finance and other areas like that.
It seems as though most data center operators are focused on the hyperscaler market and the cloud service provider market. Is that where you are looking as well?
I think if I were to boil it down, we’re looking at the hyperscalers and then the next tier down. So we do believe that there are players in the market right now that are not your traditional class of hyperscalers, that are, I think, going to be either hyperscale in nature or supporting the hyperscalers.
Without naming the customers, you can see the ones in the press that are very focused on AI, GPU as a service, things like that, that we believe are going to be part of that—that general pool of companies that ultimately are going to be the backbone of what’s going to happen the next two to five years.
So we’re going to continue to focus on that traditional hyperscaler and also spend a decent amount of energy on those ones that are providing an ecosystem service that is complementary to the hyperscalers.
Think about companies that have unique offerings that ultimately can be consumed by the hyperscalers. There’s a couple in the core market that are doing that right now, and they’re predominantly focused on AI.
When we look at the chip manufacturers, they are starting to buy capacity at pretty substantial clips. When you start looking at people that have bought those chips, specifically GPUs, they’re starting to look at data center capacity at a pretty substantial clip.
So those are the types of customers that are adjacent. I wouldn’t call them ‘small’ or ‘junior.’ They’re just adjacent, complementary markets, components that are part of the hyperscale ecosystem, if that makes sense.
Power capacity is the coin of the realm right now. How is EdgeCore navigating that choke point?
So there’s two parts to that. I think picking the right spots in the country where the power companies are working in tandem with all of their consumers to make sure that they’re forward-planning [is one].
When we look at [NV Energy in] Nevada, that power company is probably one of the better power companies that I work with. I think they do a great job of floor planning and things like that, which makes Reno a very interesting place to work.
When you look out into Phoenix, there’s a lot of forward planning going on right now, and it’s just being at the planning table, really.
A lot of times, what happens in our world is you wait for the power to come. In today’s world, you can’t wait. You have to be at the table with the power planners telling them, ‘Here’s what we see, here’s the real capacities that we think we’re going to get from our customers from a loading standpoint,’ and ‘Can we participate in the process?’
I think that's how EdgeCore continues to stay at the edge of making sure that power is available. Power is always going to be a problem, right? And it’s really not a generation issue. It’s more of a transmission problem.
And making sure we’re working with the planners on a consistent basis for the areas we’re in—we're very choosy about where we go—is the key to making sure that we have power that’s deliverable in the time frames we're looking at. Some is short term. Some is a little bit longer term.
So we just continue to work at the planning table on the power side.
Can you talk about your plans for EdgeCore here in the first 90 days or the first year?
In the first 90 days, I want to make sure that, from a product standpoint, we’re locked and loaded.
I think the key to making sure that we delight our customers is repetitiveness and consistency. So one of the things I’m focusing on is making sure that throughout whatever we’re building is the same, and then how we’re responding to our customers is the same.
That’s one of my core focuses, and that’s one of the things that I’ve discovered to be kind of the secret sauce to continuing the work of these hyperscalers. So that’s first and foremost.
I think second for me, there’s some things that we want to do around continuing to advance the EdgeCore culture. One of the things that happens with a company that grows as fast as we’re projected to grow is you can lose some of that DNA. That’s what drew me to the company. So I’m working diligently with our HR teams and things like that to make sure that whatever we do, we’re taking the steps we need to make sure that EdgeCore culture remains intact.
And then I think lastly, there’s a lot of touchpoints that we need to do with our customers. We haven’t really talked about how we’re approaching our customers to make sure they know who we are. So I’m spending time out in the field with our sales teams and our customers just to say, ‘Hey, look, this is what we’re doing. This is our design. This is our product. This is what you can expect from us. And if you have any problems, talk to me.’
That’s the first 90 days.
The first year, I think what we want to do is obviously take that product we have and make sure that we’ve got customers that are delighted in using it; we’ve got it sold and used in and use by a customer because it's great capacity and great spots, and it is AI-ready.
So it’s got a lot of potential use for a lot of different customers.
And while we’re doing that, we need to finish out the ultimate staffing of our operations team and make that a reality. That is something that will delight our customers as well. And then in parallel, there’s a lot of things that we want to do around telemetry and that component that will allow our customers to get the information that they need because AI is very informational. A lot of people lose sight of the fact that the AI platforms actually need to understand how things are working in the data center in order to adjust.
Those are some of the things in the next probably six months to nine months that I want to make sure that we’ve got locked in. So when the next wave comes, we’re ready and from a platform standpoint it is the same everywhere so we can be in a position to take on the next challenge.