Executive Insights: Mitch Fonseca of Cyxtera

MITCH FONSECA, VP, Data Center Products, Cyxtera

Mitch Fonseca is the VP, Data Center Products at Cyxtera, leading the global datacenter product management and commercial services teams, and is responsible for product pricing and positioning. With over 11 years in IT infrastructure, Fonseca has experience in product management, operations, sales, finance and business development.

Most recently, Fonseca served as Sr Director of Strategy and Operations at General Electric, where he helped develop GE’s long-term data center and cloud strategy and headed GE’s data center operation teams. Prior to GE, he joined Digital Realty, through their acquisition of Telx. At Digital Realty, Fonseca served as Director of Global Product Management for Colocation and Services. There he managed Digital Realty’s retail colocation product within North American, Europe and Asia; driving increased profitability to a wholesale datacenter footprint.

Prior to Digital Realty, Fonseca served in positions of increasing seniority at Terremark, and later Verizon, from 2005 until January 2015 – most recently as Director of Product Management for Verizon Terremark. In that role, he was responsible for the development and management of colocation and network products within the datacenter, as well as market intel and pricing for all datacenter products.

Here’s the full text of Mitch Fonseca’s insights from our Executive Roundtable:

Data Center Frontier:  This year we have seen strong demand for data center space in international markets. What are the biggest opportunities and challenges for data center companies in operating at global scale and working with multi-national clients?

Mitch Fonseca: Data sovereignty concerns in international markets create new opportunities for data center companies. At Cyxtera, we’re seeing increased demand for capacity in places such as the UK, Frankfurt, Amsterdam and Singapore as enterprises seek data locality in compliance with local privacy laws. To serve our multi-national customers in these markets most expeditiously, we’re expanding our footprint with existing facilities while planning new builds in strategic locations.

Data center providers face two key challenges operating on a global scale to support multi-national clients: customer service and flexibility. Enterprises expect a consistent service experience regardless of data center location. For example, Cyxtera provides customers a single contract vehicle across our global footprint as well as a self-service portal for administration, billing and support across their entire environment.

“Data sovereignty concerns in international markets create new opportunities for data center companies.”
Mitch Fonseca, Cyxtera

Flexibility is also key as customers’ capacity and location needs are always changing. Our on-demand data center platform, CXD, gives multi-national customers the ability to point, click and provision interconnection and infrastructure in a consumption-based model. In addition, Cyxtera allows our customers to shift capacity to and from other markets or between products without penalty. This enables a customer to deploy traditional colocation today and port that over to a CXD deployment in a new market quickly and easily as their demand shifts or expands.

Data Center Frontier: There’s currently huge interest in interconnection and network services. What are the most significant trends in the network features customers are seeking, and how providers are delivering these services?

Mitch Fonseca: Unprecedented demand for edge computing and mission-critical, secure, direct access to cloud and SaaS platforms has made interconnection and network services the table stakes for most enterprises. According to 451 Research, one of the significant trends emerging to address this demand is a more cloud-like approach for how colocation and cloud interconnection is provisioned. 451 Research refers to this as “software-programmable interconnection…a form of network overlay – creating an easy way for customers to interconnect their presences in multiple data centers.”

Another key trend is the need for a variety of cloud connectivity options, not a one size fits all approach, to optimize total cost of ownership and improve resiliency. Enterprises want the freedom to choose their preferred path to the cloud or service provider they need. For example, many prefer to use cloud on-ramps rather than direct cloud connections. They prefer to save as much as 50 percent on their interconnection costs while only adding 1 to 1.3 milliseconds of latency roundtrip. Cloud on-ramps offer enterprises other advantages, including dual entrances into facilities and multiple network options to provide local, regional, and national availability zones.

Enterprises not only want access to more diverse and flexible network services from their data center providers; they want to easily manage these network services on-demand via API and self-service portal. Adaptable pay-as-you-go terms are also preferred over design-to-peak given the changing nature of enterprises’ bandwidth and connectivity needs.

Data Center Frontier: The speed of data center deployment is accelerating, with innovation in the supply chain and how facilities are built and leased. What do you see as the most important issues to address to keep pace with the rapid growth of digital infrastructure?

Mitch Fonseca: As discussed in our Executive Roundtable response regarding international demand , to speed data center deployment in new markets Cyxtera is expanding our footprint by leasing existing facilities while planning new builds in strategic locations. Cyxtera partners with hyperscale providers with state-of-the-art data center designs and operational excellence as well as a common interest in offering customers flexibility, security and connectivity. This results in a better ecosystem in which retail colocation customers and service providers can connect directly to hyperscalers within the same facility.

Whether the facilities are built or leased, one of the most important issues impeding the pace of deployments is the 3 to 6 months it typically takes enterprises to provision colocation environments within that facility. Our customers – including enterprises, service providers and technology companies – have compressed that timeline down to hours and days, not weeks and months, with Cyxtera’s CXD on-demand provisioning of interconnection and preconfigured dedicated infrastructure. CXD’s ability to seamlessly expand and integrate non-contiguous capacity by stretching layer 2 networks within a facility or across a metro region also maximizes utilization and significantly accelerates deployments.

Data Center Frontier: What lies ahead for data center automation? What are the key opportunities in using data (and perhaps even AI) to make data centers more efficient and productive?

Mitch Fonseca: Automation plays an important role in a data center. At Cyxtera, we use it to optimize energy efficiency and improve operations staff productivity. As automation and machine learning are increasingly embraced, data center providers have the potential to leverage this technology to help avoid problems as we predict events before they occur.