Executive Insights: Robert McClary

Robert McClary, FORTRUST

Since joining FORTRUST in 2001, Robert McClary has held the critical role of building the company into the premier data center services provider and colocation facility that it is today. Robert is responsible for the overall supervision of business operations, high-profile construction and strategic technical direction. He developed and implemented the process controls and procedures that support the continuous uptime and reliability that FORTRUST Denver has delivered for more than 13 years. He is considered one of the leading experts on Management and Operations in the data center industry, and was selected as a finalist by AFCOM for Data Center Manager of the Year. In 2010, Robert received designation as an Accredited Tier Specialist (ATS) by the Uptime Institute. Robert developed and honed his skills during his 16-year tenure in the United States Navy, serving in both enlisted and officer roles. He is a graduate of Southern Illinois University. Speaking on topics such as data center design, construction, management and operations Robert has presented and participated on many panels at industry events such as 451s Uptime Symposium, Data Center Dynamics, 451s Hosting Cloud Transformation Summit, and IT Summit Denver. To give back to the data center community and promote youth technology education, Robert serves on the Board of Directors as President for the Rocky Mountain Chapter of the 7×24 Exchange and Chairs the Board of Directors for KidsTek.

The Impact of Cloud Computing

Data Center Frontier:  How is the rise of cloud computing impacting the data center market? How do you see this trend playing out between major public clouds, service providers and in-house corporate data centers?

Robert McClary: The rise of cloud computing has impacted the colocation data center market in a positive way. Cloud computing has become another managed hosting service in many cases. Several years ago, people were predicting that cloud computing would cannibalize the colocation data center market, and they were completely wrong. Just like any other IT managed service offering, it has actually lead to the growth of the colocation industry. Cloud computing service providers are a new, and growing, customer vertical which has accelerated growth in many multi-tenant colocation data centers. Cloud computing will inevitably evolve other product and service offerings under this umbrella.

I believe public clouds as well as service providers will continue to expand and that we will see growth in enterprise and private data centers because of this progression.[clickToTweet tweet=”Robert McClary: Cloud computing has impacted the colocation data center market in a positive way.” quote=”Robert McClary: Cloud computing has impacted the colocation data center market in a positive way.”]

The Evolution of Regional Markets

Data Center Frontier: In recent years the data center business has seen solid growth in geographic markets outside the tradition major data hubs. What are the most promising markets, and what trends will guide where we see growth in regional markets?

Robert McClary: In the past, data centers were traditionally put in place close to telecommunication. Modified telco hotels, office buildings, or general use commercial facilities that were in close proximity to connectivity were being inaccurately labeled as data centers. Now that connectivity is becoming more widely accessible and available, the trend I see happening is that data centers are becoming purposefully designed and built to a mission or “fit for purpose” rather than a convenient location.

People are calling any room with servers in it a data center. We need to define what the mission of a data center is. We also need to define the criteria a data center has to meet in order to be called a data center. A data center’s mission should be to create reliability, mitigate risk, and provide uptime for the technology and applications that it enables.

As data centers become aligned with their true mission you will see data centers being built in areas sheltered from natural disasters. Additionally, I believe data centers will start gravitating more towards sources of energy and cooling than connectivity. You will also see data centers emerging in markets such as the Midwest and Southwest that have lower energy and real estate costs along with less geographic risks. Areas that are more prone to the risk of natural disasters, such as the coasts, will most likely see a decline in data center builds. There is too much capital involved in designing and building a data center to risk putting them in these disaster prone areas.

A glimpse inside a FORTRUST data center. (Image: FORTRUST)

The Impact of Pre-Fabrication

Data Center Frontier: Factory-built components are playing a larger role in data center deployment. What’s your take on the impact of pre-fabrication in data center construction, and its role in the future of the industry?

Robert McClary: Building a data center is a huge capital investment. Anything you can do to reduce the costs, including pre-fabrication and/or modular design, and better allocating capital in a just-in-time type model makes perfect sense. It is hard to increase the quality of a data centers infrastructure and reduce cost if every data center has a substantially different design than the last. Pre-fabrication in the data center market has been slow to evolve, in part due to the fact that engineers want to keep designing data centers and re-purposing specifications within the same paradigm they’ve had for the last 20 years, with only slight modifications.

Pre-fabrication is starting to catch on because of the undisputable economic advantages. More data center owners should be demanding that their engineering and general contractor firms look at pre-fabricated or modular models.

The Innovation Landscape in Cooling

Data Center Frontier: Cooling has been a key focus of energy efficiency efforts in the data center. Is there still opportunity for innovation in cooling? If so, what might that mean for how data centers are designed and where they are located?

There are many methods that can be used for cooling data centers. These methods can be dictated by where the data center is located and what sources of cooling and energy they have available to them.

There will always be opportunity for innovation in cooling, but we need to spend just as much time considering the actual consumption at the IT equipment stack. We should be looking at alternative energy sources along with more efficient hardware. Data center infrastructure that modulates to the real time IT hardware demand is more efficient and needs to become the norm. We should not be utilizing infrastructure distribution and cooling models set up for the worst case scenario or a perceived load that doesn’t exist, which is wasteful.

PUE will be an ongoing discussion in our industry, but people need to step back and realize that purpose designed and purpose built data centers are better than a server closet in an office building. I have yet to see a PUE on a server closet, but I’m sure just about any purpose built data center is better.