According to 1623 Farnam president Todd Cushing, Interconnection facilities – particularly in Omaha – are just getting started. He explains all this and more in his latest interview with DatacenterHawk’s Hawk Talk series in episode 49.
Interconnection Facilities Are Just Getting Started
“We are finding that the growth is going to continue. I don’t see any stop in fiber. I don’t see any stop in content. I think you’re going to see more and more data aggregate in places that are on the edge,” Cushing explains to HawkTalk’s David Liggit. As the digital economy bloomed in the 1990s carrier hotels became practically vital and financially valuable infrastructure, with meet-me rooms and network connections forming the foundation of digital business activities.
Now, more than 20 years later, these connectivity facilities are proving to be long-term players, perhaps more important now, than ever. For Cushing, the need to boost the flow of data between content specialists, network operators, and carriers has increased in recent years, as cloud campuses spread to more remote areas of the country. Large urban centers like Dallas or Chicago, he says, already provide homes for the colocation industry, but that’s starting to change: “We’ve seen people go out of those traditional spots. We’re going to see more of that here in Omaha, as well. I think you’re going to see other cities that aren’t on the map today start to show up as on the map because they’re going to have content as well.”
Cushing knows this because he’s seen Omaha, home of 1623 Farnam’s edge data center, blossom into a hub of opportunity for interconnectivity. His business has seen “a mix of regional, you’ll get longhaul, you’ll get dark fiber, you’ll get all kinds of connectivity that starts to aggregate there. There’s a lot more peering going on. We like to think we’re building an ecosystem, so we’re an interconnection facility.”
And for Cushing, things are just taking off: “I’m super excited about what we have going on here. If you pick an alphabet of hyperscale companies and went through and picked some companies within that, in Omaha there is every vertical you can imagine as you work through that.” All the relationships that grow alongside when big social media and search engine companies come to town create the opportunity for diverse and exciting relationships. “We can help them, they will help us, and we can grow something that’s really special and unique,” says Cushing, “I think that’s what’s going to happen and I don’t think it’s going to be unique to Omaha”. By the sounds of it, things are really coming together.
Watch it below!