D E E P D I V E
What style of management philosophy do you employ in your current position ?
As the team lead for DE-CIX in Southern Europe , I have a fantastic team across multiple disciplines and I always strive to trust and empower them . Beyond that , my philosophy is to be of service to the customers and to genuinely understand what they need rather than just putting my agenda or services in front of them . I try to develop a relationship with the customer and put mutual trust first . Creating a long-term relationship has always been my priority .
Sometimes , what I have to offer is not relevant to this person or the company , but the relationship is still valuable and perhaps we can support each other in different ways – with a recommendation , for example . It ' s just a reflection of the community spirit that I see throughout the interconnection industry .
What do you think is the current hot talking point within the data centre space ?
Everybody ' s looking into power availability , and of course , Artificial Intelligence ( AI ). These are common topics in discussions with everyone I talk to currently because everybody ' s building data centres everywhere , and preparing for their data centres to be power-ready and interconnectivity-ready . You might have a space , but if you cannot draw electricity and you don ' t have interconnectivity , it ' s just a silo . How can traffic go in and out ?
So nowadays , wherever I go , they will say , ‘ I have 100 MW available ’, or ‘ I have 60MW ’, and everybody ' s excited about how the new applications like AI that drive this growth will unfold in the coming months . They ' re talking about how to house AI platforms , AI-as-a-Service , what kinds of applications you can derive from AI platforms , the ratio of AI training to AI inference , and where the business opportunities are .
How do you deal with stress and unwind outside the office ?
I normally just want to go out to a quiet place to chill out with my friends and family . I love to relax , have a nice glass of wine , listen to music and have life-enriching conversations . Sometimes this even includes customers with whom I have a good relationship . I enjoy having a simple coffee or a glass of wine and listening to their stories about their children , their lives , seeing the photos of their newborns – it just melts my heart .
What do you currently identify as the major areas of investment in your industry ?
Well , looking at my region in Southern Europe , we see massive investment in new data centre infrastructure , including hyperscalers , colocation facilities and HPC data centres across the Iberian Peninsula , as well as the construction of grid-scale renewable energy plants ( solar , wind and hydro ) – specifically to support digital infrastructure . This is hugely exciting and we see great potential for Iberia not only as an excellent opportunity to optimise international data traffic flows but also as a carbonneutral hub for Europe ' s AI industry .
As the recently published study , The Iberian Peninsula : A next-generation regional mega hub , demonstrates , Iberia is an interesting region for investment for both infrastructure players and Fortune 500 companies , and we will see continuing strong growth across the peninsula in the coming years .
For me , other areas where investment is now needed are in building more Edge data centres , and related to that , creating greater interconnection density . Evolving data traffic pathways need new opportunities for interconnection . We see the concept of a regional mega hub in the interconnected hubs and infrastructure markets on the Iberian Peninsula , and this concept will be needed on a global scale to meet the needs of tomorrow ' s digital services and applications .
Additionally , enterprises should look at how they can distribute and interconnect their infrastructure across different data centres to support the evolution of traffic flows . They should be exploring the diversification of their data centre strategy , using multi-tenant data centres with strong network ecosystems and taking control of their network interconnections to create greater resilience as well as lower latency connectivity . �
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