Executive Insights: Matt Miszewski of Digital Realty

MATT MISZEWSKI, Digital Realty

Matt Miszewski is Senior Vice President, Sales and Marketing, at Digital Realty, responsible for overseeing the company’s sales and leasing efforts as well as marketing activities globally. He joined Digital Realty in January 2013.

His more than 20+ years of professional experience includes a prior role at Salesforce.com, where he was Senior Vice President, Enterprise Sales and the Global Public Sector, responsible for establishing a new enterprise sales program that was focused on global and strategic accounts. He also served as General Manager, Worldwide Government at Microsoft, where he reformed the firm’s Global Public Sector business unit to focus on industry relevant solution-selling for the government vertical. In addition, earlier in his career, Matt worked as Chief Information Officer for the State of Wisconsin, President of an IT consulting firm and partner in a law firm.
Matt received his Law Degree from the University of Wisconsin Law School and his Bachelor of Arts from Marquette University.

Here’s the full text of Matt Miszewski’s insights from our Executive Roundtable for the second quarter of 2016:

Data Center Frontier: In the first half of 2016 we’ve seen unusually strong demand for wholesale data center space from cloud builders and Internet enterprises. Is this a short-term phenomenon, or is cloud growth fueling a long-term shift toward larger requirements?

Matt Miszewski: More companies are becoming data companies, producing and consuming massive amounts of disparate data. As the amount of data grows, it is becoming a greater challenge for companies to cut through the clutter and extract meaningful insights. Now more than ever, there is an overwhelming demand for real-time data, enhanced agility and scalability for online applications, so data centers are becoming increasingly more complex. We believe that this is the long-term growth trajectory for the industry, which is facilitating growth of the cloud and is bringing exciting new opportunities to an ever-expanding digital world.

Hybrid cloud strategies enable companies to gain control over their data. With hybrid cloud environments, enterprises can quickly and efficiently access, analyze and exchange data, especially as speed and performance are increasingly differentiators in the competitive tech market. There is growing recognition among business and IT leaders of incorporating hybrid cloud strategies for business success, and this will not die down anytime soon. The hybrid cloud is the end-state where every company is going to end up.[clickToTweet tweet=”Matt Miszewski: The hybrid cloud is the end-state where every company is going to end up.” quote=”Matt Miszewski: The hybrid cloud is the end-state where every company is going to end up.”]

Data centers are forming the foundation for our digital world and provide the physical connections, infrastructure and networks for everything we access and communicate via the cloud. They provide the physical infrastructure needed to facilitate the connections between cloud providers and businesses, so it is no surprise that the market is seeing a strong demand for wholesale data center space.

Data Center Frontier: A growing number of data center providers are embracing renewable energy. Is it becoming easier to procure renewables at a scale and price that makes sense for data centers? Which approaches hold the most promise?

Matt Miszewski: Two interesting trends are coming together for energy and data centers. First, corporate buyers (including Digital Realty, Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Equinix and others) contracted for almost 3.5 GW of new renewable energy power purchase agreement capacity in 2015. That was more than 50% of the overall PPA market in 2015 – for the first time it was more than what traditional utilities procured in a year. And earlier this month researchers released a report on total energy use by US data centers, updating prior research dating back to 2007. The findings indicate that data center’s explosive energy use has begun to plateau (contradicting earlier projections) at around 70 billion kWh, with load growth of only 4 percent from 2010 to 2014. Taken together, this indicates a sea-change in how seriously the data center industry is focusing on managing it’s carbon footprint by becoming more efficient and by procuring non-polluting energy to power data centers.

Earlier this month, we announced a landmark renewable energy agreement as a part of Digital Realty’s ongoing efforts to drive sustainable energy consumption in its data centers. This long-term agreement with E.ON Climate and Renewables North America, LLC to purchase approximately 400,000 megawatt-hours of wind power annually will offset 100 percent of the energy usage of Digital Realty’s U.S. Colocation and Connectivity business, reducing our data center carbon footprint by approximately 275,000 metric tons per year. The environmental benefits from this agreement have an impact comparable to taking 58,000 cars off the road each year or offsetting the carbon emissions of 29,000 U.S. homes per year. This agreement to purchase wind power expands on our existing programs such as our Clean Start Program, that has procured 100,000 megawatt-hours of renewable energy credits for new customers, and our European power procurement program that supplies our data centers in the EMEA region with 100% renewable energy.

As CIOs and IT leaders transition their businesses to the cloud, even more resources are required to establish and maintain these facilities. By capitalizing on green power as a unique way to deliver highly efficient and sustainable solutions that meet the needs of an increasingly connected world, Digital Realty is staying at the forefront of the data center industry. We also recognize the importance of addressing the growing demand among our customers for renewably powered data centers and we are deeply committed to sustainable and environmentally responsible business practices.

A data center at Digital Realty’s Dallas campus. (Image: Digital Realty)

Data Center Frontier: In recent years, the data center industry has made solid progress on energy efficiency. What are the most promising opportunities and strategies for continued improvement?

Matt Miszewski: Yes, it has! A new government sponsored report stated that while the number of data centers has grown rapidly over the past several years to support the increase in data, the energy needed to support that growth has actually been flat. For the industry, this is great news because it means that that data centers are not as power-hungry as they were ten years ago. This in part, is due to better cooling and powering strategies, better power management and cloud computing. The most promising opportunities are with sustainable data center design and renewable energy.

Today, hundreds are pursuing the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification, a voluntary rating system for energy-efficient buildings from the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC). These types of certifications and implementation of energy efficiency measures in data center design can result in operational savings, lower operating costs and increased asset value.[clickToTweet tweet=”Matt Miszewski: Data centers are not as power-hungry as they were 10 years ago.” quote=”Matt Miszewski: Data centers are not as power-hungry as they were 10 years ago.”]

Additionally, data center providers should source renewable energy to power its buildings, such as wind, solar and biomass. Working with energy producers and utility companies to source power for data center operations, allows data center providers to create solutions that meet their clean-energy objectives. Data center providers and businesses like Google, Amazon, Apple and Facebook are pursuing the benefits of sustainable power sources for operational savings, and Microsoft just launched Project Natick, a sealed data center made of recycled materials and dropped offshore to take advantage of free cooling from ocean waters. The search for sources of power that cost less, offer stable pricing and are more sustainable, is driving innovation and investment in new data center energy efficient technologies.

Data Center Frontier: New technologies like the Internet of Things, virtual reality and artificial intelligence are generating excitement in the technology world. What are the implications of these new technologies for the data center sector?

Matt Miszewski: IoT, virtual reality and AI all have one thing in common: more data. 451 Research published a research report stating the data market is expected to nearly double in size in just five years (from $69.6bn in revenue in 2015 to $132.3bn in 2020). With technology trends like IoT, AI, virtual reality, big data, BYOD, among a variety of other trends taking off, we’re going to see a different set of data center requirements emerge.

The true value of IoT lies in the data, which will drive the need for powerful computers and analytics to crunch the data from the devices. These systems will require space, power, cooling and connectivity to get the job done. Additionally, the continuous flow of data from IoT applications will often be shared with an ecosystem of partners or packaged with content to deliver different types of services. So the need for direct and secure access to partners and suppliers will drive the need for a range of connectivity options.

For certain applications, latency will also be a concern. Organizations will need to put their data and computing infrastructure in close proximity to users and the devices, to be able to connect directly to their trading partners and supply chain.

IoT initiatives will leverage a combination of public cloud, private cloud and enterprise data centers. Any new initiative will require a tailored data center strategy that balances current needs with future growth and potential applications. CIOs will need to think carefully about their data center strategy to ensure it provides the flexibility, scalability, security, availability and connectivity that the emerging technology trend will demand.