Hello. My name is Tony Grayson and I’m general manager of Compass Quantum. In the data center industry, much like when I was in military, we like to standardize our terms, which, by the way, I’m in favor of. But this can sometimes lead to esoteric arguments that do nothing to solve the customer’s needs.
An example of this would be wholesale versus retail. Does the customer really care what model you think you’re following? When I was in their shoes, I just cared about cost per kilowatt, cost per acquisition, or cost per RU. I think a similar thing could be said about the definition of edge. We all have spent time talking about it at conferences, posting about it on LinkedIn, writing articles, myself included, but I don’t think the customer cares about the labels we are trying to define it as within a certain distance or latency.
I think customers who develop their own requirements based on their own product and what they really want is the ability to add capacity when and wherever they need it without having to disrupt their own operations, add existing headcount, or beg their board for more capital to be able to deliver it. This capacity ask could be down the street, in their parking lot, in the next city over, or even in the outback of Australia. It shouldn’t matter. Since we in the data center industry like our own terms, I’m calling this idea of easy, anywhere, sustainable deployments, white space as a service.
In future videos, I’ll explain more about white space as a service and how it better aligns with real-life customer requirements. Thank you.
