An industry veteran, Clint is the Chief Revenue Officer of QTS Data Centers and Founder of IEIC. With over three decades of sales leadership experience in the data center, telecommunications and Internet technology industries, Clint has held senior leadership roles in companies including Cable & Wireless America, Exodus, Digital Island, Qwest, MCI, Intellifiber Networks, PAETEC, Sidera, Lightower and UUNET.
Innovation
Companies are beginning to realize the enormous task at hand of managing their Internet avatar. What does the online presence of their company look like? How does it interact with the world? Is it serving customers or employees? Is it secure? Is it resilient? Previously, these questions were far less complex and many companies built, owned and operated their own data center. Or, they fashioned the least used space in the corporate office complex as a “data center”. When a bank goes from 100% analog transactions to 100% online portal transactions numbering in the billions—you’ve hit a new paradigm…one they are not equipped to handle. Moving colocation from on-prem to off-prem in today’s environment requires innovation that creates data transparency and visibility. Companies must have a full view of every aspect of their operations, just as if they ran the data center themselves, with the ability to see what services they have purchased and how much of those services they are consuming.
Sustainability
In the 80’s less than 1% of the world was online. In 2019, many estimates place the percentage at greater than 50%. Why does this matter? An industry is growing up in front of our eyes to support everything, from our habitual views of cat videos to our refrigerator communicating with us about the need to get eggs today. This, in turn, has created the rise of the data center as one of the largest energy users on the planet. And as one of the largest users of energy comes the responsibility of being one of the most environmentally conscious users. As the idea of recycling evolves from plastic to data, we will begin to think about where our data lives, what is used to produce it, what is its carbon footprint and what’s the impact of data on non-renewable resources. Large enterprises and tomorrow’s leaders, in particular, will demand that data center operators create a sustainable infrastructure to earn their business.