Speaker 1: 00:03 Welcome to the Tech in 20 Minutes podcast, where you will meet new tech vendors and learn how they can help your business. At Clark Sys, we believe tech should make your life better. Searching Google is a waste of time, and the right vendor is often one you haven’t heard of before. Hi. I’m Max Clark, and I’m talking with Russell Crozart, who is the senior vice president of marketing and product strategy for Cyxtera.Speaker 1: 00:23
Russell, thank you for joining.
Speaker 2: 00:24 Absolutely. Thanks. Good morning.
Speaker 1: 00:26 So, Russell, what does Cyxtera do?
Speaker 2: 00:30 6Terra is a global data center provider. So that means that we are own and operate data centers around the world for retail colocation, which means delivering multi tenanted data center space and power for enterprise customers.
Speaker 1: 00:49 And in addition to your floor space and data center colocation practice, you now have this service line called CXT that we’re gonna talk about. What is CXT?
Speaker 2: 00:58 Yes. CXT is 6Terra’s extensible data center platform. So it’s a software defined network fabric that allows us to interconnect our customers to themselves, to other customers, to 6Terra delivered services, to third party vendors. It is an interconnectivity platform that is, programmable. It’s available on demand.
Speaker 2: 01:22 It’s seamless network connectivity for our customers to anything that they might want to enable their hybrid strategies.
Speaker 1: 01:31 So Xixtera has done something really interesting with CXT where it’s not quite a full public cloud platform, and it’s not a bare metal platform. You’re somewhere right in between. And and in comparison to market, people that are, you know, based on VMware vCloud. Right? That’s a very specific IS type platform, and and you’re not.
Speaker 1: 01:49 You’re you’re somewhere. So how does how do you actually fit in this market, and and who’s your target customer?
Speaker 2: 01:54 Yeah. So if you think about the traditional data center space, customers are very familiar with consuming and deploying space and power. They’re they’re taking their infrastructure and deploying that into the data center. And so when we took a look at the market when we formed Zixtera about 3 years ago now was how do we deliver data center products and services faster? How do we how do we deliver data center products and services better?
Speaker 2: 02:22 If you think about the traditional paradigm now for the modern enterprise, their users, their customers are used to going out to public cloud or going online and instantly point click and provisioning of infrastructure resources and having access to those today, where in contrast with the traditional data center over the past 20 years, it’s really been focused on going out and signing a a contract and spending 3 to 6 months, sometimes 9, and and and at times even longer for larger enterprise deployments to go through that process of procuring the infrastructure, setting up their space, getting the infrastructure deployed, racked and stacked and integrated. And it’s just a very long process time to value. And so we wanted to model around the the new paradigm for the the modern enterprise. Really, our our traditional customer base is is the enterprise customers. And we really wanted to deliver on how they’re used to getting infrastructure today.
Speaker 2: 03:27 How do we speed up that time to market and time to value for their business applications? How do we make this a more seamless experience and deliver all the same value? So we’re we’re somewhere in between the the consumption model of public cloud with the cost predictability and security and reliance of traditional data center infrastructure. So we’re we’re taking the best of both worlds and combining them without losing the value and benefits of either, but not being contained into the downsides of of each of those models.
Speaker 1: 04:05 I like the term time to value. The, you know, traditional data center space and world, it’s not necessarily so much the, you know, provisioning of of the data center or the servers, especially in distributed environments where you’re talking about geographically dispersed locations. It becomes the long term maintenance that that’s a lot of enterprises struggle with. You know? How do you actually support equipment replacements and and cycle you know, motherboard failures and, you know, hard drive swaps and those sorts of things?
Speaker 1: 04:31 So utility becomes really nice. So when you’re talking about providing utility platform, 6Terra owns all those pieces. The enterprise doesn’t have to worry about who’s supporting this hardware in this data center wherever it happens to be in the world. But then what’s what I really like about this is it’s predictable consumption. You know, you’re not talking I mean, a lot of people get cloud bills and are shocked when they see how expensive these things get very quickly.
Speaker 1: 04:52 And in the Xixtera world, you know, you have how many resources I want. Like, this is my bill. My bill is gonna be this each month. And it’s really actually a neat offering. And then in that case also, you’re not dictating what people are running on the hardware.
Speaker 1: 05:07 Right? I mean, how do you work with the enterprise? How do you work with the customer to decide what deploys? Do you even have that conversation, or are they just doing everything themselves?
Speaker 2: 05:15 Yeah. So the beauty of what we’re doing is the fact that customers no longer have to care about being the infrastructure managers. So kind of going back to what you you you said previously, you’re absolutely right in that we also take on now the burden of owning and managing the hardware. And so customers I mean, let’s be honest, customers don’t want to be in the data center management business. They don’t want to be in the infrastructure management business or the hardware business.
Speaker 2: 05:48 They wanna focus on the the business applications that are bringing value to their their internal or external customers. They they want to focus on running their business, not, you know, which was traditionally just a cost of doing business. It’s a it’s a, a cost center that they have to have to support their business. So what we’ve been able to do is we’ve now gone a little further up the stack than a traditional data center provider in that we now provision and own the hardware, but we still make it available to customers in a dedicated fashion. They have direct access to the lights out board on servers, so they have full control.
Speaker 2: 06:30 And while we do have conversations with customers about the types of workloads that they’re running in their environment to help them size the environment appropriately, they still have the full flexibility to run whatever they would run-in if they had gone out and bought the hardware themselves and put it into, you know, their data center or into third party colocation, and they can operate it and treat it just like it’s, their own hardware and their own software that they’re running. And all we’re doing at that point is monitoring for a heartbeat on the servers themselves, and we’re managing the multi tenant network that’s laying underneath. And and so customers have this full level of control, but they don’t have to engage with, all that comes entailed with managing the underlying infrastructure and and worrying about, you know, the procurement and provisioning and and the monitoring of that hardware.
Speaker 1: 07:28 For an enterprise that already has a data center or is already moved into public cloud or is on prem thinking about moving off prem, what is the moment for them to look at Cyxtera? What what triggers that conversation, and what do you find is the most successful version of that of of of that transition?
Speaker 2: 07:50 Yeah. There are 2 components that really set 6tera apart from any other option or alternative that are out there. One of them is purely data center interconnection and capability from a global platform perspective. So Sixera is one of a very small handful of global data center providers. So truly, data center as a global platform.
Speaker 2: 08:17 There are very few providers out there that have the the the footprint that Syxtera has of high quality m and o certified data center assets. So we’ve got an incredible fleet of 62 data centers around the world in 29 key markets, that customers are, always looking for ways to reach their customer where their customer is. And so 6 star can provide that on a scale that, most other providers can’t do. And in addition to our core benefit and value that we have and and we bring to the market, we also have the innovation. So what sets us apart from the traditional data center provider that really hasn’t changed in 20 years is the spirit of innovation and the fact that we have brought in our own in house development organization led by Jason Lockett, our our CTO, who’s the brainchild behind things like TerraMark Enterprise Cloud and, behind VMware’s foundation portfolio.
Speaker 2: 09:22 We have built and developed from the ground up this, this greenfield idea of CXD and really delivered on something that, you know, before we launched it wasn’t ever found anywhere in the market, especially from a data center provider. So when customers begin to look at their options of either cloud repatriation or they’re looking at data center consolidation, and they’re focusing on the attribution of these new mandates in the in the era of digital transformation and and, the cloud first mandates, we are able to deliver on the core data center value that you would look for in a major global data center provider, but also the innovation that you would find in a much smaller, much more agile startup type of environment. And we’re able to combine those in a way that, you know, when customers are beginning to do their evaluation, to them, we’re speaking to all the right, all the right queues. We’re ticking all those boxes that customers have when they’re going down that checklist of who makes the right provider, not just today, but who’s gonna grow and scale and meet the challenges that they’re gonna face down the road.
Speaker 1: 10:35 Is this conversation being driven by the the CFO of, you know, our cloud bill is too expensive. Let’s do something different. I mean, is this a CSO driving a security conversation? Is this an IT department, you know, and a CIO saying, I’m looking for a better performance envelope? I mean, what is that entry point into that discussion with Exterra?
Speaker 2: 10:53 Yeah. You’ve just hit on these 3 key pillars that, this that this fits into in the discussion. Right? The CFO is looking for, I need to get out of the CapEx game. Right?
Speaker 2: 11:03 I need to be looking at OpEx. I need to be figuring out how to do subscription based. I need to understand how to get out of, you know, these these huge assets on my on my, balance sheet. The the CISO is looking at the dangers, or security concerns or exposure and risk that they have moving to wholly new security postures for enterprise applications moving off prem or moving into the cloud. And so they’re looking for, how do I get the same value and security around my dedicated private infrastructure?
Speaker 2: 11:37 And then the CIO is challenged with adopting these new strategies for, the the new modern era of hybrid IT. And, you know, how do I focus on this cloud first mandates, that that is coming down? And how do I really transform my legacy infrastructure into something modern that is, gonna meet the demands of my business unit? So we actually have all three of those conversations with all three of those pillars in in enterprise, and we were able to deliver and solve the challenges of all 3. So we really get engaged at there’s so many different entry points into any of those three pillars, but those are always the 3 pillars of the conversation that we end up having with enterprise that allow them to say, yep.
Speaker 2: 12:20 This is this is what makes sense to me. This is this is really how I deliver on the on the problems I’m having every day, the challenges that I’m tasked with solving.
Speaker 1: 12:29 6Terra is a relatively new brand with very old assets underneath it. Can you talk a little about the formation of 6Terra and and what actually these underlying assets are in your lineage? Because if you look at 6Terra as a 3 year old company, it’s very young. But if you look at 6Terra as a, you know, asset base, it’s it’s very sophisticated and very old.
Speaker 2: 12:49 That’s right. So Seixtera was built in in 2017 is when we formed the company with a procurement of the CenturyLink data center asset. So our lineage, there, for the assets themselves, and if you, know anything about the history of CenturyLink, it’s actually a combination of things like Exodus and Sabbath that were, combined and grown over over a very long time. And there is a huge investment into ensuring that these assets were some of best in class, making sure that they were m and o certified across the board. So, the the average, experience of our data center operations staff is is something like 15 plus years.
Speaker 2: 13:33 So there’s a huge quality to the the not just the assets, but how we operate them and manage them. And we’ve made huge investments in improving and expanding those that footprint and the quality of those assets that we have. So we actually combined from VC Partners with Medina Capital, and Medina Capital is, the you know, comes with the full brain trust of the folks who brought Data Return and, eventually, Terramark that was sold, to Verizon back in, in 2011. And, you know, that combination of long history of cloud and data center and managed services and managed hosting experience combined with the, you know, the great assets that we acquired from the CenturyLink, data center business and combining those together to mesh, this new story. So while the name is new and the brand is new, the experience and the lineages in this in this space and and bringing quality to enterprise for solving, you know, real challenges in a modern way is is just a perfect combination for our customers.
Speaker 1: 14:42 Who are your customers? I mean, when you look at your portfolio, what what’s, let’s say, an is it industry? Is it geography? Is it business segment? Is it size?
Speaker 1: 14:51 Like, who makes up your customers, and who’s your ideal customer that you’re talking to?
Speaker 2: 14:54 Yeah. The the majority of our customers are enterprise customers. So we have some SMB, some commercial, but the vast majority is enterprise to global enterprise. So those are the customers that are really looking for data center as a global platform. Those customers who are looking for multi site deployments working with a single provider, that that’s really who our customers.
Speaker 2: 15:20 Now when you look at it from an industry or a vertical perspective, it really is across the board. Now we have a high number of financial services, high-tech, health care, government. We’ve got some of those key verticals, global retailers, law, education. We see a a number of different verticals, but they’re really across the board in terms of where they’re geographically dispersed. You can think obviously London and New York.
Speaker 2: 15:48 Those air those data center metros, we have high numbers of financial services. So it can be a little more distributed by the market that we’re operating in. But from a vertical or industry space, it really it really crosses the board.
Speaker 1: 16:01 In the data center world, the evaluation is space and power. How much space how do I how much power do I need that influences what I’m gonna be paying? For somebody looking into a budget cycle around, you know, a CXD platform, what are those levers that they would be looking at and to start down that road of thinking about, is this the right selection for us and this is the right path for us? What would they what would they expect and should be prepared for?
Speaker 2: 16:26 Yeah. So as as customers are beginning to make their evaluation, they’re thinking from a budget perspective about the the space and power that they’re going to need for the size of the infrastructure. The traditional buying pattern of a customer and budgeting is for the next peak in demand. Right? So they’re trying to look at how much space and power am I going to need and in what markets.
Speaker 2: 16:47 And, traditionally, they would go out and they would work with various data center providers to actually understand the market rates and the markets that they want to be in, and then they would begin to look at how much they’re actually going to need and how much contiguous space can I get? And, obviously, there are some markets that have, much more saturation of of data center providers, so there’s much more available space and cost is generally lower. And then there are very hot markets that, are are are you know, there’s not a lot of available inventory in terms of space and power. And, you know, that’s actually one of the reasons that we built CXD was to enable customers to not have to think about the way that they do it today. So the traditional customer might say, I need, you know, 200 kilowatts of of space and power, and I need that all to be in a contiguous space so that I don’t have to deploy networks, network infrastructure and and compute storage infrastructure across multiple different, man you know, caged environments.
Speaker 2: 17:46 And CXD is is one of, the the reasons, customers no longer have to think about that with Cyxtera in that it doesn’t matter if that space is contiguous in that for all intents and purposes, they can programmatically and seamlessly via web portal or API stretch their layer to networks in hyper low latency speeds to have what a multi, even within our multiple, data centers in a metro can stretch their network flat across the, across all of those data centers and turn it into a single pool of space and power. So we’re working within the bounds of what our customers are traditionally thinking of whenever they’re going out to identify how much, space and power they need and and what the cost of that space and power would be, but also being able to take away some of the constraints that they would have normally had in thinking, well, I might only need a 100, kilowatts of power now, but I’m gonna need another 100 in 12 months, 18 months, so I better buy it now. And allowing our customers to get out of that cycle of thinking, I’ve gotta do that, whereas they can only buy what they need from us now, not worry about paying for that additional 100 k dub that’s gonna sit there, idle for the next, 12 to 18 months.
Speaker 2: 19:07 And when it comes time to acquire what they need, it could be anywhere in that metro. And for all intents and purposes, they can use and leverage the the capabilities from CXD to to stretch, the network so that it feels like a single contiguous space for them.
Speaker 1: 19:24 Awesome. Russell, thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 2: 19:26 Absolutely. Thank you.
Speaker 1: 19:29 Thanks for joining the Tech in 20 Minutes podcast. At Clark Sys, we believe tech should make your life better. Searching Google is a waste of time, and the right vendor is often one you haven’t heard of before. We can help you buy the right tech for your business. Visit us at clarksys.com to schedule an intro call.
