Computing

Site Selection and Why It Matters in 2022

October 17, 2022
Carmen R. Sellers





























































































































































































































Data center operators around the world face the challenge of finding enough land, power and water to support the rapid growth of cloud computing. As campuses become megacampuses, it becomes difficult to find suitable real estate. Because of this, site selection has become one of the most important skills in the data center business.

At this week’s Data Center Frontier Show, we speak to Ernest Popescu, Vice President for Global Site Development, Data Centers at Iron Mountain. Popescu has years of experience in hyperscale site development and capacity planning for Amazon Web Services and Facebook, but saw a unique opportunity in the growth of Iron Mountain Data Centers, which has won both enterprise and cloud deals. Popescu is also intrigued by the potential of leveraging Iron Mountain’s global real estate inventory of more than 1,400 documents to support edge computing.

Listen to today’s broadcast:

Here is a timeline of the topics Ernest and I discuss on the podcast:

  • 1:00 – Ernest’s data center journey.
  • 2:45 – Why data center capacity planning is difficult. “The past isn’t necessarily a good predictor of the future,” says Ernest.
  • 5:30 – Why Iron Mountain after working so much with hyperscalers?
  • 10:00 a.m – Why the 2022 site selection is such a hot topic.
  • 12:45 – How about faster networks? Are they changing any of the site selection methods?
  • 16:00 – Edge computing and why this is an opportunity for Iron Mountain.
  • 23:00 – What Ernest likes best about this job.

Here are some links with more information on the topics we are discussing:

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