Executive Insights: David Shepard of BASELAYER

DAVID SHEPARD

BASELAYER

David Shepard is EVP, General Manager of the BASELAYER Anywhere hardware division. In this role, David is responsible all facets of the hardware business unit including sales, marketing, product development, manufacturing and customer service. Prior to his current role, Shepard was SVP of Enterprise Sales at both BASELAYER and IO Data Centers where he led sales and marketing initiatives, most notably the development of IO’s Private Cloud product and delivery of data center as service to Fortune 100 companies. He also worked as SVP Sales and Marketing for FORTRUST; a Colorado based data center colocation company. In his position, David led FORTRUST’s transition to modular data center deployments. resulting in their current position as the market leader for the Rocky Mountain region. Before becoming an executive in the data center colocation market, Shepard served as COO of Totaltix, an online ticketing application that assists professional athletes in managing their contractual ticket allotments. David successfully grew the business and spearheaded the successful sale to MLBAM. Shepard graduated from Arizona State University with a Bachelor of Science in Finance.

Here’s the full text of David Shepard’s insights from our Executive Roundtable:

Data Center Frontier: Over the past year, some of the industry’s largest companies have developed new designs for their data centers. In a number of cases, these redesigns have featured changes in cooling systems. What do you see as the important trends driving how data center operators are approaching cooling?

David Shepard: One of the bigger trends we’re seeing is indirect, outside air cooling. This technology provides most of the efficiency benefits of outside air economization, without exposing critical IT equipment to the variable humidity conditions or contaminants that may be present in direct outside air applications. Economization, whether direct or indirect, allows operators to realize tremendous savings in operational cost, with little or no extra risk to the system. That’s good for the environment, and for the bottom line, which makes it possible to deploy more servers, or be profitable in a competitive market. If you were driving a large truck down a hill, would you rather let it coast and save the fuel, or ride the brakes and the gas pedal at the same time?

We’ve also been seeing containment technologies requested almost universally. One benefit of a modular deployment is that containment is essentially built into the design. Any opportunity to reduce the bypass of treated air, or send air only where it needs to go, is an opportunity to gain efficiency and reduce operating costs.

Data Center Frontier: Edge computing and the Internet of Things are currently two of the hottest topics in the data center industry. How might these trends impact how we build and deploy data center capacity?

David Shepard: Edge computing and the Internet of Things go hand in hand. Network latency issues occur when data has to travel a longer distance from beginning to end, so what we’re saying here is that the network has limitations. About 5.5 million new “things” are connected to the Internet every day, and when they need to travel further to talk to their connection source, it will take longer and increase traffic on the network as a whole.

Edge data centers are an excellent solution to a rapidly increasing number of connected devices. Data centers in more remote places offer a quicker connection to internet and to the world and relieve stress on the network for common tasks. With modular data center technology and DCIM tools in place, it’s much simpler to build and manage a data center in more areas of the world, outside of the mainstream data center markets.

An illustration of a future DataStation, with dozens of modular data centers adjacent to a bulk transmission station. (Image: SRP/BASELAYER)

Data Center Frontier: The cloud computing sector appears to be entering a phase of more concentrated growth. How do you see the cloud evolving as a business, and how might this impact data center service providers and vendors?

David Shepard: The cloud market is maturing, and with that customers deploying the cloud realize that certain providers aren’t meeting all of their needs. In some cases, they’re having to deploy multiple cloud solutions to meet their needs, which results in a hybrid cloud solution – for example, part AWS and part private, all private, etc.

People are learning which applications fit better in each scenario. This knowledge is giving data center providers and vendors an opportunity to go to customers and help them with a hybrid cloud deployment. Modular data centers fit in perfectly here. They deploy rapidly, are scalable, can be built anywhere (in the parking lot of your office building), and then you can move any other services you don’t want onto your private cloud to AWS or Azure and continue to operate at a good service level for the end user.

Data Center Frontier: Recent cloud growth has increased the focus on “speed to market” – the ability to deploy data center capacity rapidly and efficiently. How would you evaluate the industry’s progress on provisioning timelines, and where do you see opportunities to improve it?

David Shepard: One of the benefits of modular construction is that we provide a standardized, engineered, proven product that does not need to be redesigned for every order. As a manufacturer, we can quickly go from order to finished product, and work concurrently with site preparation so the project ties together right at the end, with the modules arriving at the site just as the pad and site infrastructure is ready. Just like buying a car, it’s much faster and more convenient to purchase a standard set of factory options than request a long list of customizations, or a completely unique car.

For smaller edge deployments, local power capacity may already be available to operate the system. For larger systems, it’s smart to provision the site for the full anticipated build. The work takes longer and is more expensive on the front end, but as the site grows, data center expansion is nearly as easy as ordering a new module and making the connections when it arrives on the site. It’s also more efficient than building a huge building, which will take 5 years to fill, when it’s possible to plan ahead but only purchase the modules that are needed today.