Cool Vector Video-Podcast

DigitalBridge's land bank is 'very important' but comes with risks One of the world's top data center investors also maintains a land bank in case customers need more capacity, says Jonathan Friesel, Senior Managing Director at DigitalBridge. "In order to meet the demand needs, having access to land bank is really important," Friesel tells Cool Vector. "We call it intelligent risk. We want to be able to flip on and meet that customer need as soon as it comes on, and so that requires us to take some financial risk in terms of making sure that you have capacity available at all times." A land bank holds speculative, pre-income investments in powered land that could serve as locations for data centers. Friesel shares his insights in the Cool Vector episode, "EQT, DigitalBridge and Zayo See 'Gargantuan' Upside in Fiber Networks," also featuring Arnav Mitra, Managing Director at EQT Group, Bill Long, Chief Product and Strategy Officer for Zayo Group, Cool Vector editorial advisor Phillip Koblence of NYI, Critical Ventures, UIA and Nomad Futurist Futurist, and host David Snow. Watch the full episode on the Cool Vector YouTube channel: https://lnkd.in/e9agrtVa Follow Cool Vector on LinkedIn: https://lnkd.in/eG_HDGCS #datacenter #digitalinfrastructure #coolvector #land #CRE

Edge compute was a 'sideshow' until it started making money, says data center vet Edge data centers, previously dismissed as commercially unviable, are now making money, says Tony Grayson, President and General Manager at Northstar Technologies, Inc..Grayson is best known as the former President of Compass Datacenters. Edge "wasn't making money - it all comes down to what makes the money" Grayson tells Cool Vector. "I was like the sideshow, like the two-headed person. 'Let Tony jump up and down! Let him talk edge!'" "You are starting to see applications now that do make money, that are latency-sensitive, that are edgy," Grayson adds. Grayson shares his insights in the Cool Vector episode, "The Modular Future of Data Centers is Coming to a Parking Lot Near You," also including veteran data center operators, Phillip Koblence and Nabeel Mahmood, both co-founders of non-profit Nomad Futurist, and Cool Vector host David Snow. Watch the full episode on the Cool Vector YouTube channel: https://lnkd.in/eY9hXwKx Follow Cool Vector on LinkedIn: https://lnkd.in/eG_HDGCS #datacenter #digital #digitalinfrastructure #coolvector

Industrial real estate pros can make good data center investors: Thor Equities Industrial real estate investors can cross over to data center investing, but only if they have experience dealing with heavy utilities and municipalities, says Raj Vohra, Thor Equities Group head of data centers. Vohra is the former North American head of data center acquisitions at Google. "If the only industrial work a group's ever done is just throw up warehouses, and never having to acquire significant utilities or urther leap than having touched things in the advanced manufacturing space, or things that have touched heavy utilities," Vohra tells Cool Vector,. "Then it starts to become a much closer marriage." The advice is relevant in the current digital infrastructure market, where investment groups focused on real estate, private equity and infrastructure are adding data centers as a new asset class, and building teams with the right skill sets. Vohra shares his insights in the Cool Vector episode, "Thor Equities' New Data Center Head Learned a Lot at Google." Watch it on the Cool Vector YouTube channel: https://lnkd.in/eyk8V565 Follow Cool Vector on LinkedIn: https://lnkd.in/eq_tvNBr #coolvector #datacenter #digitalinfrastructure #realestate #cre #google

Data center vet: 'Build for what you need. Don't overbuild anymore' Data center customers are better off adding modular units over retrofitting legacy centers, says industry veteran Tony Grayson, President and General Manager at Northstar Technologies Group, Inc.. Grayson is best known as the former President of Compass Datacenters Datacenters. "Why would you take a 4 to 6 kilowatt data center, and retrofit it for 40?" says Grayson. "Because guess what? By the time you're done retrofitting, they're going to be at a megawatt. You're better off just dropping stuff in your parking lot." Northstar provides small, modular data centers, often installed in close proximity to office buildings, such in parking lots. "Build for what you need. Don't over build anymore," Grayson tells Cool Vector. Grayson shares his insights in the Cool Vector episode, "The Modular Future of Data Centers is Coming to a Parking Lot Near You," also including veteran data center operators, Phillip Koblence and Nabeel Mahmood, both co-founders of non-profit Nomad Futurist, and Cool Vector host David Snow. Watch the full episode on the Cool Vector YouTube channel: https://lnkd.in/eY9hXwKx Follow Cool Vector on LinkedIn: https://lnkd.in/eG_HDGCS #datacenter #digital #digitalinfrastructure #coolvector

Unlike nuclear submarines, 'no one's gonna die' when data centers go dark The former commanding office of a US Navy nuclear submarine says the uptime requirements of data centers are not as much a matter of life and death. "If a data center goes down, yeah it's bad for ROI," says Tony Grayson, President and General Manager at Northstar Technologies Group, Inc.. "No one's going to die. That's what the difference is." Grayson, best known as the former President of Compass Datacenters, was responding to a question from data center executive and Cool Vector editorial advisor Phillip Koblence about whether he ever found it "cute" that data center customers have such stringent, "super high uptime requirements," given the safety requirements in a nuclear submarine. Grayson notes that with the rise of autonomous vehicles, data center uptime may increasingly become a matter of safety "if you want your Tesla not hitting things on auto pilot." Grayson shares his insights in the Cool Vector episode, "The Modular Future of Data Centers is Coming to a Parking Lot Near You," also including veteran data center operators, Phillip Koblence and Nabeel Mahmood, both co-founders of non-profit Nomad Futurist, and Cool Vector host David Snow. Watch the full episode on the Cool Vector YouTube channel: https://lnkd.in/eY9hXwKx Follow Cool Vector on LinkedIn: https://lnkd.in/eG_HDGCS #coolvector #datacenter #digitalinfrastructure #cars

Data center market filled with players who 'don't understand the supply chain' The booming data center market is rife with aspirational developers who "don't understand the dynamics of the supply chain," says Raj Vohra, Thor Equities Group' head of data centers. Vohra is the former North American head of data center acquisitions at Google. Vohra tells Cool Vector he commonly gets inbound inquiries from land owners who say, "'Hey, we've got 200 megawatts today.' And I go okay, wow, this is interesting," Vohra tells Cool Vector. But upon closer reading "you figure out, oh, no, there's 200 megawatts on the line today, but the substation is still twenty-four months out. Being near a major power line or substation is not enough." Vohra shares his insights in the Cool Vector episode, "Thor Equities' New Data Center Head Learned a Lot at Google." Watch it on the Cool Vector YouTube channel: https://lnkd.in/eyk8V565 Follow Cool Vector on LinkedIn: https://lnkd.in/eq_tvNBr #coolvector #datacenter #digitalinfrastructure #realestate

EQT is building 'one turnkey' for data center hyperscalers EQT Group, one of the largest private equity firms in the world, is "investing across all of infrastructure" to be positioned for the explosive growth of AI, says Arnav Mitra, Managing Director at the firm, among the largest investors in data centers. "How we can offer the hyperscalers and the big customers one solution and one turnkey is super interesting," Mitra tells Cool Vector, noting EQT's investments across energy, transport and logistics and environmental services. "Our view formed by speaking with the largest customers out there," adds Mitra. "We're in the early innings of this thing as it relates to AI. There's some blips along the way, but we only see the trend improving and accelerating over time." Mitra shares his insights in the Cool Vector episode, "EQT, DigitalBridge and Zayo See 'Gargantuan' Upside in Fiber Networks," also featuring Bill Long, Chief Product and Strategy Officer for Zayo Group, Jonathan Friesel, Senior Managing Director at DigitalBridge, Phillip Koblence, Cool Vector editorial advisor and executive at NYI, Critical Ventures, UIA and Nomad Futurist, and Cool Vector host David Snow. Watch the full episode on the Cool Vector YouTube channel: https://lnkd.in/e9agrtVa Follow Cool Vector on LinkedIn: https://lnkd.in/eG_HDGCS #coolvector #datacenter #digitalinfrastructure #privateequity

NEW episode: Thor Equities' Raj Vohra tells Cool Vector what he learned while head of data center acquisitions at Google and what Thor's approach to digital infrastructure will be. "We'll see evolutions of different product types," Vorha tells Cool Vector in a wide-ranging interview. "There's going to be a lot of demand in a lot of different forms over the foreseeable future." https://lnkd.in/eyk8V565 #datacenter #coolvector #digitalinfrastructure Thor Equities Group

Ex-Google data center exec: Compute demand will be driven by 'countless types of applications' "We're just scratching the surface" of compute demand, says Raj Vohra, data center lead for Thor Equities Group, as well as Google's ex-head of North American data center acquisition. Vohra tells Cool Vector "demand has blown past supply" in the data center world, and that imbalance is driven by the applications known and not yet known to the market. While at Google, Vohra learned the company is "really look at the range of applications out there on the horizon, be they consumer, be they enterprise, be they robotics - the countless types of applications that data center demand is trying to fulfill it through compute, through inference through enterprise," Vohra tells Cool Vector. "We're just scratching the surface of what the world needs for compute capacity." Vohra shares his insights in the Cool Vector episode, "Thor Equities' New Data Center Head Learned a Lot at Google." Watch it on the Cool Vector YouTube channel: https://lnkd.in/eyk8V565 Follow Cool Vector on LinkedIn: https://lnkd.in/eq_tvNBr #coolvector #datacenter #digitalinfrastructure #realestate

Data centers to be upended by decomposable, then quantum computing The ever-evolving data center industry is facing new waves of change from decomposable infrastructure and quantum computing, says Tony Grayson, President and General Manager at Northstar Technologies Group, Inc.. Decomposable infrastructure is a design that separates CPU, memory and storage and re-links the functions over optical interconnects, enabling “Lego-like” mix-and-match upgrades. "We're going to build a data center for that, and then quantum computing is going to be here, and the Data centers to be upended by decomposable, then quantum computing we're going to build a data center for that," Grayson tells Cool Vector. "Those are going to be the next problems that we'll have to solve, and we're talking in the next five to six years." Grayson is best known as the former President of Compass Datacenters . Grayson shares his insights in the Cool Vector episode, "The Modular Future of Data Centers is Coming to a Parking Lot Near You," also including veteran data center operators, Phillip Koblence and Nabeel Mahmood, both co-founders of non-profit Nomad Futurist, and Cool Vector host David Snow. Watch the full episode on the Cool Vector YouTube channel: https://lnkd.in/eY9hXwKx Follow Cool Vector on LinkedIn: https://lnkd.in/eG_HDGCS