Life on the edge can be dangerous. Randy saw it as an opportunity to found EdgeConneX, a data center company built to bring speed to the market. He took some time to walk us through his journey and how his experience shapes his outlook on today.

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On HawkTalk 47 David visits with Randy Brouckman and discusses the beginnings of EdgeConneX, how COVID-19 has changed the industry, it's long term effects, and what the future of the international data center markets could look like. Randy gave us some great insights based on his experience starting and leading a top tier data center provider in EdgeConneX.

Check out a few quick takeaways from our conversation below.

EdgeConneX aims to bring speed to the market

EdgeConneX was founded with a goal of bringing speed to the everyday technology user, or in other words “eliminating the spinning pinwheel.” They planned to do this by bringing the data closer to the user. EdgeConneX recently embarked on a data center building blitz to realize this vision, building 23 data centers over 24 months.

The effects COVID-19 will have on the data center industry

COVID-19 has acted as an acceleration of the digitalization of businesses. Within the first 30 to 40 days of COVID-19, there’s been tremendous growth specifically in the connectivity to the cloud. Users have been moving towards needing more power and more space with the growth of technology usage.

The future of the European data center markets

In Europe, there will be no slow down in the expansion of the big core markets: Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam, Paris, & Dublin. While expansion is going to continue to take place, the data sovereignty in Europe could also be driving the opening of new availability zones in new markets. Adding a second availability zone in Germany because Frankfurt isn’t enough could be a possibility, or opening a zone to service eastern Europe. These availability zones could very well be led by edge data centers.

We also talked about…

• How newer technologies such as autonomous cars & 5G affect the edge
• What Randy is excited about being a leader in the data center industry

Don’t forget to check out the rest of our HawkTalk's and don’t miss out on our latest release of market data for the data center industry.