IEIC Special Coverage | Jon Greaves

QTS Data Centers, Chief Technology Officer

While technicians and operations staff are often onsite, essential employees, “Shelter in Place” orders and social distancing policies have led data center providers to reinvent the logical and physical security, safety, and operations protocols that typically define life in one of our facilities. The concepts of “visibility and control” were core to the development of QTS’ Service Delivery Platform (SDP), a virtual interface that quite literally enables our customers to see who is in their environment, the power utilization of their racks, as well as real-time visualizations and extensive reporting metrics. SDP’s functionality has empowered tenants. Operations staff proactively manage and monitor deployments while site access and travel is limited.

QTS’ growth has long been tied to the development of resilient networks and diverse connectivity options. In addition to our robust offerings in primary markets, QTS has also strategically diversified our portfolio’s geography to create new connectivity hubs located in Richmond, VA., Piscataway, NJ., Hillsboro, OR., and Groningen, NL., and optimize data packet routing paths. This, in conjunction with QTS’ subsea cable on-ramps and various Network Access Points (NAPs), has created unique instances whereby tenants can bypass the utilization spikes currently clogging networks in locations such as Ashburn and New York City. This diversification isn’t simply the diversion of traffic from major hubs; rather, it completely eliminates them. Removing this “extra leg” is an immensely powerful protection against network disruption and ensures our customers’ expedient access to their data.