Q&A with Chris Downie, CEO of Flexential
Big Interview

Q&A with Chris Downie, CEO of Flexential

Chris Downie - CEO of Flexential.jpg

In the build up to Capacity North America (05 & 06 September 2018 | Denver, US), Capacity heard from Chris Downie, CEO of Flexential

What are your key developments for 2018?

Flexential has experienced notable growth in 2018 across a variety of areas, and we’re eager to continue these developments throughout the remainder of the year. We started the year off strong in January with the announcement our new HybridEdge offering, which delivers a holistic edge computing strategy for superior reach and connectivity capabilities.

In May, Flexential’s New Cross Pacific subsea cable went live, commencing from our Brookwood data centre in Hillsboro, Oregon, to deliver our fastest, lowest-latency direct network connection between the US and Asia. Meanwhile, Flexential’s wholesale offering launched that same month, designed to meet the growing demand of enterprises, mobile carriers, as well as content and cloud services providers seeking turnkey, high capacity space and connectivity to support their growth.

Our most recent – and arguably most exciting – development has been the launch of our FlexAnywhere platform. FlexAnywhere allows customers to access a broad set of IT infrastructure through a one-hop connection from any of our data centres or partner PoPs. Anchored by our 100Gbps private and secure network backbone, our software-defined hybrid infrastructure service exchanges critical data through all 41 of our geographically diverse data centre locations.

What are your strategic priorities for 2018?

Looking ahead, Flexential has developed its strategic priorities for the remainder of the year. The first and most important of which is customer experience, so we’re looking to create a compelling, consistent user experience strategy. We’re doubling down on core colocation in IT and compliance centric Tier 2 markets, while also growing share of wallet with cloud and other targeted services that drive infrastructure. Given we want to focus on compliance-centric markets, we believe this will aid our enterprise expansion efforts as we look to drive targeted expansion to larger businesses. We plan to accomplish this larger expansion by developing a scalable, continuous model that will bolster efficiency throughout our entire business. The final priority is tied to our geographic footprint. We’re looking to establish a plan for new data centre expansion into the Tier 2 market and assess Tier 1 markets.

What are your expansion and development plans for 2018?

Our expansion and development plans remain focused around company growth. We plan to kick off significant enhancements to our FlexAnywhere global network fabric, and expand our current footprint across the US through several facility expansions. Most recently, we completed our expansion in Hillsboro, OR and began construction for our Atlanta facility. Our expansion efforts will target 3+ megawatt businesses models across various enterprise sectors. Through peering and carrier access, we plan to further expand our connected edge strategy, all while supporting customers’ compliance-centric industries.

What new opportunities do you predict for the wholesale sector in North America over the next few years?

Given the increasing scale of today’s workload requirements, the demand for cost-effective, state of the art colocation facilities and connectivity options is growing dramatically among large-scale enterprises. As a result, we’ve already seen that our wholesale data centre solutions are helping customers future-proof their IT strategies – all while lowering the total cost of ownership and enabling an easy growth path to scale. Corporate IT solution requirements are scaling at an accelerating rate so it is critical for us to offer solutions that can scale for current and future state requirements. We also invest continuously in enhanced utility in our environments to differentiate our offerings. High power density, network alternatives, elastic cloud resources, managed solution and advance professional services support are all utilities that are critical to our customers.

What are you hoping to achieve at Capacity North America 2018?

I’m looking forward to connecting with new and existing industry peers as well as participating in critical discussions on connectivity trends and opportunities that will help us grow and expand our FlexAnywhere network platform.

Given the pace of change and innovation, it is critically important that we understand what is making a difference on the infrastructure and technology landscapes.

Gift this article