DEEP DIVE
WE ‘DEEP DIVE’ WITH TIMOTHY ARNOLD, HEAD OF
COLOCATION, SIX DEGREES, WHO TELLS US ABOUT
LIFE INSIDE AND OUTSIDE THE OFFICE.
Six Degrees is a cloud-led managed service
provider that works as a collaborative
technology partner to businesses
making a digital transition. Timothy
Arnold is Head of Colocation at the
company and he tells us how he likes
to relax and unwind outside the office.
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What would you describe
as your most memorable
achievement in the data
centre industry?
Opening Six Degrees’ flagship
Birmingham Central data centre
and delivering our first client at
the facility has been a real career
highlight for me. It is, in my
admittedly biased opinion, the best
data centre facility in the Midlands.
As someone who is Midlands born
and bred, that means a lot to me.
Our Midlands data centre facilities
were awarded the European Code
of Conduct on Data Centres
Energy Efficiency, which I
collected from Joan Collins at a
glitzy ceremony in Monaco – a
memorable occasion for sure!
What first made
you think of a
career in technology/
data centres?
Technology has always been
in my blood. When I was
growing up, my dad would
take me on day trips to
London where we’d visit
the computer stores on
66
Issue 14
Tottenham Court Road. We’d
purchase a variety of hardware
components so we could build
desktop PCs for friends and family. The
hardware of choice was Intel processors
– mainly DX2-66 in the early years, then
moving to Pentium processors with
an entire 120 MHz processing speed
in 1996. My career in data centres has
really been an evolution from those
early days.
As a student I had a part-time job
working for a software development
company, which allowed me to save
up and buy a dual processor gaming
desktop – unheard of at the time. I then
spent time working on servers and
infrastructure before moving to data
centres in the early 2000s.
What style of management
philosophy do you employ with
your current position?
My management philosophy is pretty
straightforward – just get it done.
I’ve never been afraid to pick up a
screwdriver myself and play my part
in maintaining and improving our data
centre facilities. I’m fortunate to have
a team that shares my passion and
enthusiasm for working hard and taking
pride in maintaining our data
centres’ performance, uptime
and security. I know I can trust
my team and they know they can
trust me.
What do you think is
the current hot talking
point within the data
centre space?
Connectivity is everything right
now. Edge Computing and modern,
resource-intensive applications
demand far more bandwidth than
most organisations were deploying
even five years ago. At Six Degrees
we deliver SD-WAN services to
connect people securely and
efficiently; as our Head of Colo it is
incumbent upon me to ensure our
data centre facilities keep pace with
our broader capabilities.
How do you deal with stress
and unwind outside the office?
I’m a real family man. Sometimes I
wonder if I ever truly unwind, but after
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