Cyxtera Field CTO Holland Barry Addresses Cloud, AI, Hybrid IT Demands

Data Center Frontier editors Matt Vincent and David Chernicoff recently caught up with Cyxtera's Field CTO Holland Barry on the occasion of Cyxtera and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) announcing a new collaboration to help simplify customers' hybrid IT strategies. Cyxtera is now leveraging HPE's GreenLake edge-to-cloud platform to support an enterprise bare metal platform. The podcast discussion extends to how Cyxtera is presently focused on supporting AI workloads in data centers and collaborating with HPE to offer a multi-hybrid cloud strategy. Barry revealed during the podcast that Cyxtera already supports 70 kilowatt racks in 18 markets, and is discussing expanded deployments with its customers and partners. Barry added that many present customers are considering moving to private cloud platforms, due to rising public cloud costs and unexpected fees. Barry said, "My function here at Cyxtera deals largely with the technologies that we both implement internally and also that we deploy within the data centers themselves to make sure that experience of being in the data center colo facility is seamless, feels as much like cloud as it can in terms of the provisioning of services, how we bill for things, things like that." He added, "Generally speaking, I'm a technologist at heart and I just want to make sure that what we're building is what's useful for the market to consume." Here's a list of key points discussed on the podcast: 2:01 - Barry talks about Cyxtera's vision for supporting AI workloads in data centers, including cooling technologies, network speed, power designs, and accommodating adjacencies with edge and public cloud platforms. 4:18 - DCF's Chernicoff asks if Cyxtera will offer 70 kilowatt racks a la Digital Realty. Barry explains that Cyxtera already supports this capacity in 18 of its markets, and is in active discussions with customers and partners over an expansion. 5:40 - Barry discusses how Cyxtera's collaboration with HPE addresses rising cloud costs and furthers a multi-hybrid cloud strategy, including Cyxtera's new enterprise bare metal platform and options for opex financing models. 7:53 - Use cases for customers moving to the HPE GreenLake solution via Cyxtera are discussed, including repatriating cloud workloads and tech refreshes. 15:03 - Asked about the convergence of cloud and hybrid IT strategies, Barry says that Cyxtera views themselves as part of such transformations and says the provider is up front with its customers about what workloads are best suited for their platform. The trend of recalibrating workloads from the public cloud to data centers for better cost management is also discussed. 18:22 - Barry expounds on how egress fees and other unexpected costs can lead to a "death by 1000 cuts" situation for public cloud users, driving them to consider private cloud options 19:57 - Barry observes that many customers are realizing the costs of the public cloud and considering moving to a private cloud solution, and emphasizes the importance of Cyxtera making this transition as easy as possible through technology choices and partnerships. 21:57 - Barry comments on the new Cyxtera partnership with HPE in the context of providing choices and solutions to make moving customer workloads to their venue as easy as possible, with the goal of building a multi-hybrid cloud reality in the future. Background on Cyxtera Cyxtera Technologies operates a global network of 60 data centers, supports 2,300 customers, and had $746 million in revenue in 2022. The company was formed in 2016 when Medina Capital, led by former Terremark CEO Manuel Medina, teamed with investors including BC Partners to buy the data center portfolio of CenturyLink for $2.15 billion. It was at that time one of several data center players seeking to build a colocation business atop a portfolio of data centers spun off by telecom companies. This April, Data Center Frontier's Rich Miller reported that Cyxtera Technologies was re