This edition of Voices in the Industry features Bill Stein, the Chief Executive Officer of Digital Realty Trust. Stein has been with the company since its inception, serving as Chief Investment Officer and Chief Financial Officer before becoming CEO in 2014.
BILL STEIN,
CEO of Digital Realty
I could not be more pleased to announce that Digital Realty has acquired Telx, in the culmination of the plan we announced in July. This opens a new and transformative chapter in the history of Digital Realty.
We built the global standard for technical real estate, developing a unique capability to acquire, manage, and scale data center campuses. Now, the new Digital Realty is building a unique ecosystem of open solutions powering customer growth through exceptional service, adding to a foundation of unrivaled real estate expertise.
Telx brings the promise of Digital+Realty to life. With the acquisition of this differentiated line of business, we are uniquely positioned to provide a complete range of data center solutions on a global scale that best fit our customers’ needs. At the same time, we can now connect them to the cloud and their critical partners on an open platform.
At our Investor Day on October 6, we outlined the following strategy:
- We will combine our traditional data center products at scale while adding the Telx colocation business tethered through a seamless interconnected network. Delivering this all from one data center provider increases the ease of doing business, allowing customers to focus on their key growth objectives.
- Customers demand support for the best information technology solutions inside a well-managed real estate portfolio that is focused on customer “communities of interest.” We provide that through the new DLR ecosystem strategy.
- The new strategy provides a unique opportunity to deliver an open environment that gives customers their choice of service providers, levels of redundancy, power configuration, and connectivity options that align to their ever-changing business environments, now and in the unpredictable future.
- Our open approach will involve partnering with a broad array of IT service providers that align to our customers’ existing partnerships and future needs as mandated by customer strategy, rather than a “walled garden” approach.
- Uniting customer centricity, which has been a key Digital Realty effort since I took the reins as CEO, along with first-class service, which is a hallmark of the Telx culture, creates an effortless experience for our customers worldwide.
I have had the privilege of meeting many talented Telx employees already, and am eager to meet as many as I can. It is now the obligation of our unified employee base around the world to deliver the value our customers demand and deserve, and I know we are up for the challenge.
The new Digital Realty is about removing limits to global business. We will combine unparalleled service delivery, network-dense interconnection, real estate acumen, and financial strength to create unrivaled choice and value, when and where our customers need it. I look forward to leading our employees worldwide and joining with our alliance partners and customers to bring this promise to life.
Digital Realty Trust supports the data center and colocation strategies of firms across a portfolio of data centers across North America, Europe, Asia and Australia. Its clients include global companies of all sizes, ranging from financial services, cloud and information technology services, to manufacturing, energy, gaming, life sciences and consumer products
