What’s Beyond the Cloud

At CPG, everything we do, from design and engineering to integration, monitoring and
service, is driven by our desire and ability to look beyond where the category is now and create data center solutions that meet the next-generation needs of our clients.  When we rebranded 18 months ago (from Capitol Power Group to CPG), the big question in the industry was “How do I get to the cloud?”  But we understood that the cloud was just the natural evolution of data center design, so at CPG we asked “What’s beyond the cloud?  What’s coming next?”

Anthony Rizzo, President of Infrastructure Solutions, CPG, a Columbia Capital Company

Fast forward 18 months and now the conversations are about 5G, artificial intelligence, machine learning and to some degree the edge even though the edge is becoming more difficult to define.   The givens are a need for speed of content to eyeballs, maximum uptime, scalability, flexibility, and customized turnkey solutions.  The variables: “What does my next data center look like as the industry pushes content further and faster and 5G becomes mainstream?  How do we build a data center to support the tremendous amounts of data generated by IoT?  How do I integrate artificial intelligence and machine learning into my operations?  And, how do I control costs with the increasing demands across the entire facility?”  At CPG, we’ve got the answers to these questions and more.

Jeff Ivey, VP of Strategic Development and Chad Towner, Principal Director at CPG

“Our goal is to provide clients with simple solutions to complex processes. In the end, the integration, installation and operation of data center solutions for our clients should be reasonably priced, simple to install, operate and maintain and make the clients lives simpler so they can focus on their customer’s needs. Our teams of highly skilled and experienced members aim to take the complexity out of the client process and we work diligently to ensure our clients’ success. In other words, we’ve got it!” – Jeff Ivey, VP of Strategic Development.

Most infrastructure and service providers in the data center space focus on just one areabe it equipment sales, white-space build-outs, integration, monitoring, or service.  At CPG, we take a holistic approach to data centers, providing customers with a one-stop shop for all of these specialties, but still dedicated to ensuring expertise and innovation in each area.  CPG’s growth strategy is designed to support the development and management of next-generation data centerskeeping an eye toward the future without compromising the needs of today.  Our ability to deliver cutting-edge solutions can be seen in both our customer loyalty as well as the double-digit growth CPG has experienced over the past three years.  The key to this strategy?  Our people.

At CPG, I’m known for the phrase “yes we can” because from the start, I believed that if we focused on creating an environment that empowered, we could build a successful and innovative end-to-end data center solutions and service company.  As President of Infrastructure Solutions, I’m dedicated to hiring the top experts in the critical infrastructure industry, across all disciplines.  To highlight some of the key members of our team, our VP of Strategic Development, Jeff Ivey, is a sought-after expert in the data center category with decades of experience in operations, construction and development.  Chad Towner is a hyperscale veteran and patent holder who heads up a unique and highly talented team of previous end-users who bring knowledge and insight to data center solutions that are unparalleled in the category.  And, last Spring, CPG gained two of the brightest minds in operational technology—Rick Warner and Matt Hartle—through our acquisition of OEM Engineering. 

“As industry professionals, committed to building the next-generation data center operational infrastructure, we have leveraged development technologies used in some of the Internet’s most innovative advances.  For example, semantic data modeling and metadata tagging is redefining the effectiveness of operational technologies in extraordinary ways.”- Richard “Rick” Warner, VP of Operational Technology.

But, our infrastructure expertise is only one side of our next-generation mindset.  The other is our depth and breadth of services, including intelligent monitoring, analytics and asset management, a complete complement of data center services, managed maintenance, and 7×24 availability and support.  Our clients, including cloud providers, enterprise, and colocation companies, all need a service partner that can handle all their needs, both within a given facility as well as across multiple locations.  The service industry has historically been a fragmented business driven by local specialists.  But clients with facilities across the country don’t want the hassle of dealing with lots of different service companies.   That’s where we come in.  CPG is the next generation in service—a single provider able to provide end-to-end service in markets across the country.  In addition to the standard data center services offered throughout the market, CPG, through our recent merger with Canara, now offers intelligent asset management services.  These, along with our existing operational technologies offerings, provide unparalleled insights into facilities to maximize uptime and minimize unexpected capital expenditures.

We’ve set a very high bar for ourselves at CPG.  We believe we need to be looking beyond today by anticipating and designing for the next wave. Data, technologies, security, design, engineering, products, requirements, service models—all of it will change.  As a company, I don’t want to just “be ready” for it.  Instead, we plan to be ahead of it to ensure that our clients have the facilities and technologies they need for success. CPG has been incredibly successful as a company by focusing on hiring the best, delivering innovative solutions, building trusted partnerships and anticipating what comes next.  To this end and to ensure we have the capital needed to support our continued success, in January, Columbia Capital, a private equity firm with close to $4B in assets under management, acquired a majority interest in CPG.  With their backing, I continue to be confident that “yes we can.”  We can go beyond—beyond any competitor, beyond the current requirements, beyond the expected technologies or designs, beyond what’s next—and deliver innovative solutions for tomorrow’s data center challenges.