Executive Insights: John Hewitt of Vertiv

JOHN HEWITT, Vertiv

John Hewitt joined Vertiv in October 2017 as President of the Americas, with responsibility for operations and business development in the United States, Latin America including Mexico, and Canada. Prior to Vertiv, John held leadership roles at technology companies in the US and abroad, including Vice President and Managing Director at Delphi in Detroit, MI, where he reset the company’s go-to-market approach, product line strategy, and inorganic growth strategies; Senior Vice President and General Manager and other executive roles at TE Connectivity in Philadelphia, PA, Shanghai, China, and Frankfurt, Germany, where he generated above market growth and improved profitability; and executive Finance and Supply Chain roles at Motorola in California and Pennsylvania. John earned a Bachelor’s degree in Finance and Accounting from Oklahoma State University, and an MBA in International Business from Thunderbird School of Global Management.

Here’s the full text of John Hewitt’s insights from our Executive Roundtable:

Data Center Frontier: What is the one trend you believe will be the most significant in shaping the data center industry in 2020, and why?

John Hewitt: It’s not new, but the answer has to be continued growth at the edge of the network, and that’s true in what we think about as the traditional data center space as well as any number of verticals, including healthcare, retail, education, and the federal government sector. Consider this data point from our recent Data Center 2025 survey: Among survey participants who have edge sites today or expect to have them in 2025, that group collectively expects their total number of edge sites to increase by 226% by 2025.

This is happening because there are more and more applications that require computing closer to the end user. As we continue to see more adoption of artificial intelligence and rollout of 5G networks, this is only going to increase and accelerate.

Data Center Frontier: After several years of robust growth, leasing in the hyperscale data center market moderated in 2019. What do you foresee for the hyperscale market in 2020?

John Hewitt: A plateau was inevitable. We have experienced a massive migration from traditional enterprise data centers to the hyperscale facilities of cloud and colocation providers, but we’re starting to see organizations settle into their preferred computing model. In most cases, that seems to be something of a hybrid, with a reconfigured core acting as the hub for a network that includes third-party and edge resources. We’ll still see growth in those multi-tenant facilities, but likely more moderate and balanced by additional investment in edge computing.

Data Center Frontier: Is the data center industry making progress on its staffing challenges? What are the most important steps to ensure a vibrant future workforce?

John Hewitt: Great question. Yes, we’re making progress, but it’s slower than we’d like. According to the Data Center 2025 survey, 16% of all participants expect to retire by 2025, and that number is a whopping 33% in the U.S. That is a significant loss of talent and institutional knowledge that would be difficult to manage under ideal circumstances. Couple that with the ongoing changes in the industry, including the shift to the edge and more distributed networks, and those losses add a layer of complexity and uncertainty to an already complex ecosystem.

Part of the solution is technology-driven, and we’re already seeing artificial intelligence and machine learning applied in ways that help organizations bridge that knowledge gap. But there are limits to the impact technology can have. The industry needs an influx of new data center personnel, not just to backfill an aging workforce, but also to bring new thinking and ideas to the industry at this time of change. On that front, we have a lot of work to do. There are a limited number of data center-focused degree programs available in the U.S. and Europe, and those programs are scrambling to keep up with the changes across the industry. For some organizations, the solution has been to take training in-house.

Vertiv is working on both fronts, developing more intelligent solutions while simultaneously building out internal training programs to better develop our staff. We also have robust internship programs, allowing new generations of potential IT professionals to benefit from mentoring from experienced professionals.

Data Center Frontier: There’s been intense interest in edge computing, a trend which spans multiple technologies, scenarios and use cases. How would you assess the current state of edge computing, and what developments lie ahead in 2020?

John Hewitt: This is a massive change spanning all aspects of the data center industry. It will not slow down anytime soon, in no small part because 5G is going to launch another phase of edge deployments designed specifically to support 5G networks and the services they enable.

This move to the edge is triggering adjacent changes in the data center. For example, we are seeing and will continue to see increased interest in integrated, often prefabricated solutions that are easier and faster to deploy and simpler to operate. As 5G networks expand and more of those advanced applications enter the mainstream, we’ll see high-performance, high-density computing at the edge, and that will present new challenges for organizations deploying those edge resources.