Executive Insights: Robert McClary of FORTRUST 2Q 2017

Robert McClary, FORTRUST

Robert McClary is Chief Operating Officer of FORTRUST. Since joining FORTRUST in 2001, Robert 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 451’s Uptime Symposium, Data Center Dynamics, 451’s Hosting Cloud Transformation Summit, and IT Summit Denver. 

Here’s the full text of Rob McClary’s insights from our Executive Roundtable:

Data Center Frontier: The recent British Airways data center outage caused widespread disruption to the airline’s operations, with early estimates placing its business impact at more than 80 million pounds ($104 million US). What are the most effective ways to eliminate these type of outages?

Robert McClary: I would say two things along these lines. First of all, focus the most time and effort around the “most likely” causes of downtime. If the statistics are anywhere near true and 60 to 80 percent of outages occur due to human error, then certainly not enough time is spent on correcting human error. Secondly, another major cause of downtime, statistically, is poor maintenance and lifecycle strategy. These two items make up the majority of the most likely causes of downtime.

These are both avoidable with effort. A lot of people believe that they can design around human error. And what happens is, when you start trying to design around human error, you create a lot of complexity in the infrastructure design, and then start creating more problems by overcomplicating designs. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. You try to design around human error but you end up causing more of it.  Focusing on eliminating human error is much less expensive than designing around it. We just refuse to admit that human error is not inevitable, and that it can be minimized or eliminated. We just don’t want to do it –  it’s too hard, it’s psychological, it’s not comfortable. Equipment failures are also avoidable. Comprehensive predictive and preventive maintenance is about 10 times cheaper over the long haul than corrective maintenance. We think we save time and money, but end up paying a bigger price on the backend.

Data Center Frontier:  The data center industry saw lots of active M&A activity in the first half of 2017, highlighted by Digital Realty’s acquisition of DuPont Fabros Technology is the sector’s largest deal yet. What’s driving all this consolidation? Is it likely to continue?

Robert McClary: Yes, I do believe that with the size and scale of the data center industry, and its continued growth, you are going to see consolidation. I think some of the other factors that are driving this are the Internet of Things and the need for more data center capacity globally, and I think edge computing is pushing a higher quantity of data centers that will be located randomly next to population areas. Both of those things are contributing to a lot of M&A activity, since they affect the strategic thinking of these data center service providers who are trying to prepare for the future of the industry.

FORTRUST has surpassed 15 years of critical systems uptime at its Denver data center. (Photo: FORTRUST)

Data Center Frontier:  What interesting trends are you seeing in data center power? Is there still room for innovation in data center electric infrastructure?

Robert McClary: Absolutely yes. There’s not only room for it, there’s a need for it. We need to start thinking of better ways to provide uninterruptible power to the critical loads in the data center. We also need to be thinking of things that are more environmentally sound in the data center electrical infrastructure.

Let’s start thinking about getting rid of the toxic materials that electrical infrastructure has in the traditional uninterruptible power supply components, specifically lead and sulphuric acid associated with traditional battery technology. Let’s look at different types of electrical designs that would optimize the data center real estate, but also eliminate the toxic chemicals that are found in battery systems.

There’s also room for air quality in data centers to improve. Air quality directly affects the electrical infrastructure and the hardware that is housed in the data center. It is something we should be looking at to allow for longer lifecycle of the electrical components and computer hardware inside the data center.

Data Center Frontier: It’s increasingly a multi-cloud world. What are key strategies that data center operators and their customers can use to address multi-cloud deployments?

Robert McClary: Data centers in general, and colocation data centers in particular, need to start providing an ecosystem model for their tenants, meaning their tenants or customers have to have access to several different options. They have to have convenient choices, whether it’s public or private cloud services, or different types of cloud services, and they need to have exposure to all those different cloud services inside a colocation data center.