As an early disruptor in the data center industry, EdgeConneX has collaborated with our customers to build hyperlocal to hyperscale data center solutions since inception. Our team has always pointed a new way forward for the industry and rewrote many of the rules for how a data center provider can achieve success for its business and its customers.

Today, we sum up our core philosophy in three words that drive how we do business: Customers, People, and Planet.

Customers
In the early days of the data center industry, legacy providers built data centers in a few locations, typically near the major Internet peering hubs, and asked colocation customers to come to them. This “build it and they will come” approach worked for years as the industry – and the size of the average data center – grew to accommodate the needs of enterprises everywhere.

But the concept of the edge data center introduced a new approach: listening to customers and building what they needed, where they needed it. When a customer was facing unsustainable bandwidth costs streaming video from Los Angeles to an audience in Phoenix, we thought, why not build a smaller data center in Phoenix, nearer to that audience, and see lower costs as well as happier customers, who saw less latency and higher video quality? And why not replicate that model in other fast-growing markets that were not close to the peering hubs? Subsequently, other use cases arose, including cloud access for underserved business markets across the U.S. and around the world. Listening to customers meant data centers could be located wherever they would benefit more businesses and built to the scale and schedule that customers needed, so they could become more responsive and competitive in their own industries.

The edge has always been elastic and expansive. The idea of an edge data center now spans the full spectrum from hyperlocal to hyperscale, from fleet vehicle charging stations to 2MW colocation facilities in a mid-sized market to 100MW hyperscale centers that bring the cloud to new markets and businesses worldwide. Today, edge data centers deliver cloud, content, connectivity, commerce, gaming, and more to the world at faster speeds, lower costs, closer proximity, and higher power efficiency than ever before. In every location, customers are also able to manage their data center operations from virtually anywhere and do so, all on a single pane of glass. All of this began by simply listening to and collaborating with customers.

People
But disruption isn’t only about what a company does for its customers. It’s also about how it treats its people. At EdgeConneX, our people are important and empowered. Some of the recent initiatives have been developed at the highest levels of management and human resources, but others are grassroots efforts that have resonated and grown across the company and throughout the industry.

Capstone: In 2019, EdgeConneX approached iMasons about creating a program to expand STEM education programs at historically black colleges and universities. Capstone incorporates mentoring, visiting lecturers, career counseling, and internships into a program that results in new full-time hires and helping a number of companies derive real-world benefits from diversity, fresh ideas, and eager, highly-motivated employees.

WomenConneX: A grassroots initiative started with the staff and grew into a company- and industry-wide opportunity for women to share experiences, opportunities, collaboration, and teamwork inside a global high-technology organization.

Salute: EdgeConneX is proud to be a long-time partner with Salute Mission Critical, an organization that changes lives every day by helping veterans sharpen the skills needed to be placed in key jobs and in rewarding careers as data center technicians in a fast-growing industry. We are honored to support Salute and the organization’s success as they are recognized globally for their collective and impactful efforts across our industry.

Planet
From innovative power solutions in energy-constrained regions to water conservation and filtration solutions deployed to minimize data center impacts on local water resources, EdgeConneX has taken an active role in promoting and practicing sustainability. A comprehensive, recurring report is launching in the fourth quarter of 2021, identifying achievements, goals, standards, and commitments across the spectrum covering emissions, carbon footprint, waste management, water usage, biodiversity, and other sustainability categories that can all be improved by optimized data center design, operations, and management.

In an industry not always viewed as friendly to the environment, EdgeConneX has made it a top priority to focus on taking concrete steps to improve our data center footprint, deploy more creative universal and market-specific solutions, and be good neighbors to the communities around our facilities. A few concrete examples include:

• Renewable Energy Credits (REC): Beginning in 2019, we acquired Green-e RECs for our facilities, and today we are carbon-neutral across North America and have initiated carbon-free supply contracts for a growing number of our locations.
• Creative solutions in energy-constrained areas: To help minimize our impact on communities already struggling with energy generation we have worked with local municipalities and regulators as well as leading energy companies, to design and develop custom, eco-friendly solutions for generating electricity that requires no supply from the local grid.
• In one of our major data center campuses, we have installed advanced filtration systems that allow EdgeConneX to reduce our water usage by 25% and at the same time eliminate the need for chemical or biocide treatments, allowing us to reduce any impact on the local water supply.

Customers, People, Planet. These are more than words to EdgeConneX. They drive our focus, our business, and our services: the data center solutions and tools our customers need, the vision to develop a diverse, inclusive, empowered workforce, and the commitment to improve the impacts our facilities have on the land, the resources, and the communities we touch. It’s disruption with a purpose, on a global scale.

About EdgeConneX
EdgeConneX provides a full range of data center solutions worldwide, from hyperlocal to hyperscale, from purpose-built to build-to-order, working closely with our customers to offer choice in location, scale, and type of facility. Delivering flexibility, connectivity, proximity, and value, EdgeConneX is a global leader in anytime, anywhere and any scale data center services for a diverse portfolio of industries, including content, cloud, networks, gaming, automotive, SaaS, IoT, HPC, security, and more.

Empower your edge with EdgeConneX. For more information, please visit edgeconnex.com.

To learn more about author Phillip Marangella, read his PTC Member Profile.