• About Us
  • Partnership Opportunities
  • Privacy Policy

Data Center Frontier

Charting the future of data centers and cloud computing.

  • Cloud
    • Hyperscale
  • Colo
    • Site Selection
    • Interconnection
  • Energy
    • Sustainability
  • Cooling
  • Technology
    • Internet of Things
    • AI & Machine Learning
    • Edge Computing
    • Virtual Reality
    • Autonomous Cars
    • 5G Wireless
    • Satellites
  • Design
    • Servers
    • Storage
    • Network
  • Voices
  • Podcast
  • White Papers
  • Resources
    • COVID-19
    • Events
    • Newsletter
    • Companies
    • Data Center 101
  • Jobs
You are here: Home / Voices of the Industry / Don’t Go It Alone: The Value of Trusted Data Center Partnerships

Don’t Go It Alone: The Value of Trusted Data Center Partnerships

By Voices of the Industry - May 24, 2018 Leave a Comment

Don’t Go It Alone: The Value of Trusted Data Center Partnerships

Strategic partnerships with colocation providers, contractors and suppliers make the impossible possible. (Photo: InStor)

LinkedinTwitterFacebookSubscribe
Mail

When it comes to scalability, partnerships can make or break your success in the data center world. In this edition of Voices of the Industry,  Jim Levin, Vice President of Business Development, Strategy & Marketing, Instor Solutions Inc., explains how to identify the right strategic data center partnerships – and how to hang on to them.

data center partnerships

Jim Levin, Vice President of Business Development, Strategy & Marketing, Instor Solutions Inc.

Over the years, the best partnerships have been built on a foundation of trust and dependability. But there’s one critical factor that’s often overlooked and it lies at the core of all the greatest partnerships: contrasting skillsets.

Imagine, for instance, Jobs without Wozniak. It was the combination of Steve Jobs’ marketing savvy and Steve Wozniak’s technical know-how that created the magic of the early days of Apple. The idea can be applied across the board – from data centers to cooking to everything in between. It’s the same reason sweet and savory foods go together so well or why a black and white photograph strikes such an emotional chord in the viewer: It’s all about managing and balancing a team’s contrasting skills and experience.

Whether you’re an end user, colocation provider, manufacturer, general contractor or a team of rapid deployment infrastructure expert like ours at Instor, there’s a single constant theme which requires you to properly scale your infrastructure: the ability to leverage partnerships and turn them into a win-win dynamic for both sides.

Let’s face it – none of us is an island. At some level, we all need to depend on valued and trusted partners to hit our goals. It’s not about individual weaknesses – it’s about leveraging the collective strengths of your partners to give your customers what they need to get ahead in today’s increasingly competitive environment. At the end of the day, each industry player is looking to scale its infrastructure. Even the top companies in the Fortune 500 leverage such partnerships to meet the needs of their end users every single day.

Working Across Geographic Regions

Our company, Instor Solutions Inc., designs and installs infrastructure solutions for data centers across the globe. We work closely with our clients to determine current and anticipated infrastructure needs on everything from build outs, to structured cabling, electrical design, relocation, migration and everything in between.

At Instor, we are frequently asked the question, “How do you manage multiple projects in so many geographic areas?” The answer is our trusted data center partnerships, and for very good reasons. Instor has an incredible team of knowledgeable, experienced industry veterans, but we also know that to successfully scale our project delivery model, we need to tap into our network of trusted specialty contractor partners to deliver consistent, on-time, quality installations.

Whether we leverage multiple electrical and structured cabling contractors in a specific market we’re working in, or bring the right specialty contractor to the site, it allows us to scale with our most demanding large enterprise or hyperscale projects. If you or your customer needs to build out significant data center infrastructure in multiple markets simultaneously – leveraging partnerships allows Instor to effectively be in all those places at once.

This same philosophy can be applied to our cloud/hyperscale customers in regard to their colocation data center partners. Let’s say your global data center capacity requirements top 250 megawatts, which is a very real possibility in 2018. When you have requirements like that, it’s nearly impossible to build your own data centers fast enough, so you might also have to leverage partnerships with colocation data center partners to achieve that scale. Having a colocation partner that is building the right kind of mission critical facilities, in the right market regions, and in realistic timeframes is indispensable to cloud and hyperscale customers.

Repeatability Matters

It’s also important to rely on trusted manufacturer partners to deliver products rapidly and consistently for both colocation providers and cloud/hyperscale customers. The ability to build and deploy substantially identical infrastructure over and over, and in different regions, reduces training costs, decreases downtime and substantially reduces human error.

In other words, strategic partnerships with colocation providers, contractors and suppliers make the impossible (i.e. massive scalability with consistent quality on tight timelines) possible.

There are five key elements to finding the right partners:

  1. Listening: Not just nodding-your-head-and-smiling listening, we’re talking about the lost art of really and truly listening. Listening takes experience, empathy, compassion and a mind that’s open to a flow of new information. Listening means giving your full, undivided attention and not simply waiting for the right moment to interject your own opinion.
  2. Asking questions: Detailed questions help you get to the heart of your customer’s true requirements, whether it’s related to capacity, power or deployment timelines. Probing until you find the customer’s pain points is a valuable skill, and it’s one worth cultivating.
  3. Transparency: Being open and honest is critical in all relationships. By keeping a two-way line of communication open at all times, you avoid making costly assumption.
  4. Shared sense of urgency: Your client’s challenges should become your challenges. This taps into a variety of skills including empathy, organization and prioritization of work.
  5. Mutual respect: You bring your strengths to the table, and so does your partner. By understanding and working with each other’s strong points, you’ll develop mutual respect and admiration and enjoy a better working relationship.

If you want to achieve the sort of massive scalability that’s called for in today’s data center world, you need to be open to strategic partnerships. Not only can these partnerships help you achieve your customers’ goals, but they’ll help you achieve yours as well.

Jim is Vice President of Business Development, Strategy and Marketing for Instor Solutions Inc.  

 

 

LinkedinTwitterFacebookSubscribe
Mail

Tagged With: Colocation, Colocation Provider, Data Center, Instor

Newsletters

Stay informed: Get our weekly updates!

Are you a new reader? Follow Data Center Frontier on Twitter or Facebook.
voices@richmiller.biz'

About Voices of the Industry

Our Voice of the Industry feature showcases guest articles on thought leadership from sponsors of Data Center Frontier. For more information, see our Voices of the Industry description and guidelines..

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter

Voices of the Industry

Reduce Your Water Footprint Cost-Effectively: Three Tips for Data Centers

Reduce Your Water Footprint Cost-Effectively: Three Tips for Data Centers Cem Candir, CEO of Chemstar WATER, provides three tips for data centers looking for cost-effective ways to reduce their water footprint. 

DCF Spotlight

The COVID-19 Crisis and the Data Center Industry

The COVID-19 pandemic presents strategic challenges for the data center and cloud computing sectors. Data Center Frontier provides a one-stop resource for the latest news and analysis for decision-makers navigating this complex new landscape.

An aerial view of major facilities in Data Center Alley in Ashburn, Virginia. (Image: Loudoun County)

Northern Virginia Data Center Market: The Focal Point for Cloud Growth

The Northern Virginia data center market is seeing a surge in supply and an even bigger surge in demand. Data Center Frontier explores trends, stats and future expectations for the No. 1 data center market in the country.

See More Spotlight Features

White Papers

Build-to-Suit Data Center

Case Study: Financial Services Build-to-Suit Data Center — Strength through Flexibility

In the competitive and highly regulated banking industry, demands on financial institutions come not only from customers, but from regulators and shareholders. In fact, the financial services sector is one of the most heavily regulated industries in the nation. Get the new report that shows how a collaborative partnership with Stream Data Centers gave one of the nation’s largest commercial banks the security and control of a standalone facility and the ability to specify the design, build and ongoing operation of a dedicated data center building that incorporated the most critical elements of the existing customer-built facility.

Get this PDF emailed to you.

We always respect your privacy and we never sell or rent our list to third parties. By downloading this White Paper you are agreeing to our terms of service. You can opt out at any time.

Newsletters

Get the Latest News from Data Center Frontier

Job Listings

RSS Job Openings | Peter Kazella and Associates, Inc

  • Construction Project Manager - Data Center - Bryan, TX
  • MEP Superintendent - Data Center - Bryan, TX
  • Data Center Facility Manager - San Jose, CA
  • Construction Project Manager - Data Center - Papillion, NE
  • Managing Principal - Data Center Division - Phoenix, AZ

See More Jobs

Data Center 101

Data Center 101: Mastering the Basics of the Data Center Industry

Data Center 101: Mastering the Basics of the Data Center Industry

Data Center Frontier, in partnership with Open Spectrum, brings our readers a series that provides an introductory guidebook to the ins and outs of the data center and colocation industry. Think power systems, cooling, solutions, data center contracts and more. The Data Center 101 Special Report series is directed to those new to the industry, or those of our readers who need to brush up on the basics.

  • Data Center Power
  • Data Center Cooling
  • Strategies for Data Center Location
  • Data Center Pricing Negotiating
  • Cloud Computing

See More Data center 101 Topics

About Us

Charting the future of data centers and cloud computing. We write about what’s next for the Internet, and the innovations that will take us there. We tell the story of the digital economy through the data center facilities that power cloud computing and the people who build them. Read more ...
  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter

About Our Founder

Data Center Frontier is edited by Rich Miller, the data center industry’s most experienced journalist. For more than 20 years, Rich has profiled the key role played by data centers in the Internet revolution. Meet the DCF team.

TOPICS

  • 5G Wireless
  • Cloud
  • Colo
  • Connected Cars
  • Cooling
  • Cornerstone
  • Coronavirus
  • Design
  • Edge Computing
  • Energy
  • Executive Roundtable
  • Featured
  • Finance
  • Hyperscale
  • Interconnection
  • Internet of Things
  • Machine Learning
  • Network
  • Podcast
  • Servers
  • Site Selection
  • Social Business
  • Special Reports
  • Storage
  • Sustainability
  • Videos
  • Virtual Reality
  • Voices of the Industry
  • Webinar
  • White Paper

Copyright Data Center Frontier LLC © 2021

X - Close Ad