Data Center Insights: Eric Schwartz, CyrusOne
The Data Center Frontier Executive Roundtable features insights from industry executives with lengthy experience in the data center industry. Here’s a look at the insights from Eric Schwartz, CEO of CyrusOne.
As Chief Executive Officer, Eric Schwartz is responsible for leading CyrusOne’s strategy and driving the Company’s growth including the development of strategic partnerships.
Eric previously served as the Chief Strategy and Development Officer at Equinix, responsible for the company’s corporate strategy and analytics, business development, acquisitions, corporate development and xScale™ joint venture program. During his 16+ year tenure, Eric held a series of senior-level roles, including serving as President of the EMEA region, where the company built its market-leading position through investment and acquisitions. Equinix EMEA earned numerous awards for its success, including Eric’s recognition as European Data Center Industry Leader of the year in 2015.
Prior to Equinix, Eric held a number of senior-level roles at BellSouth, Trammell Crow Company, Harold A. Dawson Company and McKinsey & Co. Eric earned an MBA from Harvard Business School and a B.S. in electrical engineering and a B.A. in economics from Stanford University.
In his spare time, Eric enjoys cycling and has completed the 140-mile, 11-city ride in Friesland, Netherlands four times.
Here's the full text of Eric Schwartz's insights from our Executive Roundtable.
Data Center Frontier: What do you see as the most significant ways whereby the unprecedented growth in digital infrastructure for AI and the cloud, and attendant core concerns surrounding power and sustainability, are giving rise to new paradigms for data center design?
Eric Schwartz, CyrusOne: All participants in the value chain are working to address the growth in demand for digital infrastructure.
CyrusOne is continually upgrading and improving the power efficiency and sustainability of our facilities with components such as closed loop cooling systems that reduce water consumption and the implementation of extensive recycling programs for customers at our sites.
In addition, we are creating new dimensions of partnership with other companies including our recently announced partnership with KEPCO, a power and utility provider in Japan, to develop new datacenter facilities.
Increasingly, our data center designs incorporate more elements for future flexibility particularly with regard to support of new cooling technologies and increasing power densities.
Data Center Frontier: Is the data center industry approaching a similar inflection point for the expansion of edge and prefab modular facilities to meet hyperscale capacity and compute demands, as it did last year with the expansion of data center rack power densities in wholesale and colocation facilities, in response to the wave of heightened expectations for generative AI and liquid cooling stakes?
Eric Schwartz, CyrusOne: CyrusOne is focused on building high performance data centers at the scale necessary to support hyperscale requirements, and Intelliscale, our design architecture that supports higher rack densities, is well positioned to support customer needs.
While Intelliscale uses prefabricated components, we are not focused on standalone edge facilities.
Data Center Frontier: Is data center operators’ level of short-term investment keeping pace with the level of hype surrounding the range of data center liquid cooling technologies; and if not, when do you think the industry will see these vectors converge?
Eric Schwartz, CyrusOne: For CyrusOne, I am confident that we are keeping pace and well prepared to support customer requirements for liquid cooling.
The industry as a whole is pursuing multiple approaches and designs for liquid cooling, and our Intelliscale design and capabilities and well-suited to support many different topologies at high levels of performance.
Our challenge is to help customers understand how to fully exploit the flexibility that we offer in support of these cooling technologies.
Data Center Frontier: To what degree do you see larger projects and heightened demand exacerbating challenges with North American supply chains and delivery timelines for data centers in 2024, and to what degree do you see creative partnerships, mergers, and acquisitions potentially helping to alleviate such obstacles?
Eric Schwartz, CyrusOne: Managing supply chain is an integral component of our business and challenges with long lead-time items persist for data center providers as well as for the broader power industry.
We continue to work closely with our suppliers as well as with utility providers to be responsive to our end-customers’ growth requirements and to use our overall scale to effectively allocate equipment across multiple locations.
Creative solutions are being deployed constantly to deal with challenges and that is likely to take many forms including alliances and partnerships.
About the Author
Matt Vincent
Matt Vincent is Editor in Chief of Data Center Frontier, where he leads editorial strategy and coverage focused on the infrastructure powering cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and the digital economy. A veteran B2B technology journalist with more than two decades of experience, Vincent specializes in the intersection of data centers, power, cooling, and emerging AI-era infrastructure. Since assuming the EIC role in 2023, he has helped guide Data Center Frontier’s coverage of the industry’s transition into the gigawatt-scale AI era, with a focus on hyperscale development, behind-the-meter power strategies, liquid cooling architectures, and the evolving energy demands of high-density compute, while working closely with the Digital Infrastructure Group at Endeavor Business Media to expand the brand’s analytical and multimedia footprint. Vincent also hosts The Data Center Frontier Show podcast, where he interviews industry leaders across hyperscale, colocation, utilities, and the data center supply chain to examine the technologies and business models reshaping digital infrastructure. Since its inception he serves as Head of Content for the Data Center Frontier Trends Summit. Before becoming Editor in Chief, he served in multiple senior editorial roles across Endeavor Business Media’s digital infrastructure portfolio, with coverage spanning data centers and hyperscale infrastructure, structured cabling and networking, telecom and datacom, IP physical security, and wireless and Pro AV markets. He began his career in 2005 within PennWell’s Advanced Technology Division and later held senior editorial positions supporting brands such as Cabling Installation & Maintenance, Lightwave Online, Broadband Technology Report, and Smart Buildings Technology. Vincent is a frequent moderator, interviewer, and keynote speaker at industry events including the HPC Forum, where he delivers forward-looking analysis on how AI and high-performance computing are reshaping digital infrastructure. He graduated with honors from Indiana University Bloomington with a B.A. in English Literature and Creative Writing and lives in southern New Hampshire with his family, remaining an active musician in his spare time.
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