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Customers People Planet: Actions Speaking Loudly

October 26, 2021

In a recent Pacific Telecommunications Council (PTC) blog, our own Chief Marketing and Product Officer, Phillip Marangella, writes:

Customers, People, Planet. These are more than words to EdgeConneX.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.

That sentiment and those statements come with a great deal of responsibility. They come with an expectation of action, long-term commitment and transparency, both internally and externally. But this kind of commitment and action is in our DNA. 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 to 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. Phillip expands on these core tenants and how EdgeConneX is making good on them at this very moment in this PTC blog, but in summary it’s about:

Customers

We pioneered the concept of the Edge Data Center and 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.

People

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, including:

Capstone: In 2019, EdgeConneX approached iMasons about creating a program to expand STEM education programs at historically black colleges and universities.

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 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.

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.

To learn more about our Customers, People and Planet philosophy and how we are proving our position through action, read the full blog here.