DEEP DIVE
WE ‘DEEP DIVE’ WITH RIK WILLIAMS, DATA CENTRE
OPERATIONS MANAGER AT NODE4 , WHO TELLS
US ABOUT LIFE INSIDE AND OUTSIDE THE OFFICE.
Rik Williams is the Data Centre Operations
Manager at Node4. He has over 18 years of
experience in the industry and holds both
a MSc in Earth Observation Science and a
BSc in Physics and Astrophysics from the
University of Leicester.
What would you describe as your
most memorable achievement in
the data centre industry?
We designed and built a 400 rack,
2MW data centre for a partner of
ours in about seven months end-
to-end. Design and build wasn’t
our core business at the time
and the project had some pretty
steep learning curves, but I was
really pleased with the end result.
I’m also pretty happy with the
facilities and DC ops teams we
have built to support Node4.
What first made you think
of a career in technology/
data centres?
I’m showing my age here, but
I was studying physics at
Leicester University when the
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Issue 01
World Wide Web
was being rolled out
– Netscape, Mosaic
and all that. At the time,
physics departments
were right on the cutting
edge of the Internet and I could
see the potential straight away.
Unfortunately, I didn’t invest in
Microsoft, Apple or Cisco shares,
so I ended up working in the
industry instead.
What style of management
philosophy do you employ with
your current position?
If you have a team of people who know
what they are doing, let them get on
and do it. Set a direction and trust
people to make decisions when they
have the expertise to do so.
What do you think is the
current hot talking point
within the data centre space?
In my area of physical DC
infrastructure, it’s all about power
and cooling efficiency, but I’ve not
seen anything radically new in DC
design for a couple of years. We are
just tweaking around the edges.
In the wider IT industry there’s a big
focus on process automation and
information security.
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