DEEP DIVE

AND OUTSIDE THE OFFICE .

What first made you think of a career in technology / data centres ?

I was 18 years old when I made the decision to study Electrical Engineering ( with a specialisation in Telecommunications ) at the University of Bologna . Since that moment , I have been involved in the technology sector – starting out my career at Hewlett- Packard and then moving into various roles in software and into the data centre space in the past 30 years . The pace of change and amount of innovation in this industry has been astonishing and it ’ s enabled me to enjoy a truly varied career across five countries . One thing is for sure , in this line of work , nothing stands still for long !

What would you describe as your most memorable achievement in the data centre industry ?

I have never been more excited about an opportunity than I am about AtlasEdge and I am very proud of what we have achieved so far . We are about to celebrate our second anniversary as a company and have made considerable progress towards realising our goal of creating Europe ’ s leading Edge platform . The combined expertise and tireless work of our outstanding team , alongside a series of highly strategic acquisitions , has enabled us to rapidly build a high-quality portfolio of 100 + sites across 12 countries .

What do you think is the current hot talking point within the data centre space ?

It won ’ t surprise you to hear me say this , but I believe that Edge Computing is enabling the next great wave of innovation . We ’ re still in the early days but the prospect and opportunity to capture such vast demand is quite staggering . I often compare the current stage of Edge infrastructure to where we were a decade or so ago with the cloud , which today drives most investments in data centres and connectivity . I would

expect Edge to follow a very similar pattern and to complement cloud deployments in the emerging cloud-Edge architecture .

What do you currently identify as the major areas of investment in your industry ?

The market trends and in-depth customer conversations all point to significant investment in both the cloud and the Edge , with a noticeable shift towards the cloud-Edge architecture that I mentioned earlier . While today the bulk of investments are concentrated in a dozen major metros across the world , as more workloads get pushed to the Edge , we will see rapid growth in data centres located in Tier 2 , Tier 3 and even Tier 4 markets .

The other key factor is the rise of AI , which is already injecting a lot of excitement into the IT industry . Initially , the main beneficiary is the chip manufacturers because of the sheer volume of data processing that is involved . As more use cases emerge , the architecture for AI applications will evolve and expand , thus driving a significant portion of the investments in digital infrastructure .

What are the region-specific challenges you encounter in your role ?

As a pan-European platform , we have our fair share of regionspecific challenges . From navigating the various EU directives to national laws and data sovereignty barriers , we must employ a very specific approach depending on which country we ’ re

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