Compass Datacenters and Salute Mission Critical Put Veterans to Work

Salute Mission Critical transforms military veterans into world-class data center technicians and as a result, is now a premier IT Data Center Lifecycle services company. Clients around the world rely on Salute to deploy, manage, and decommission data center sites with consistent, high-quality results. Compass has been working with Salute Mission Critical for years, not just because it feels right, but as both Lee and Chris state, the quality of the talent they provide makes sense too.

Recently CEO and Co-Founder Lee Kirby presented Compass Datacenters’ own Chris Crosby with an award in recognition of Compass’ initial partnership with Salute Mission Critical and their continued use of veterans to fulfill their data center technician needs.

Watch the video and read the full transcript below.

Lee: We started Salute in 2013. My business partner Jason Okroy and I had a vision that we could build a bridge from the military community to the data center industry.

Chris: When Lee first came to me several years ago with the idea behind Salute, it was very easy for me to pull on my heartstrings. Multigenerational veterans in my family, giving back to the veteran community makes so much sense to me.

Lee: We’ve continued to grow not because of the heartstrings that it pulls on to hire a veteran, but because of the quality of work.

Chris: There cannot be anything more mission-critical than what goes on in combat. So to take that into the data center space, our version of mission-critical doesn’t have quite the same meaning, but Salute takes it that way.

Lee: You bring the combination of what they’ve learned in the military, the leadership skills, the discipline, the core values, and you’ve got an extremely valuable resource. Coming into the data center industry is a perfect fit for them. The partnership we’ve got with Compass allows them to focus on their core while we focus on ours, and then they can have our guys ascend into their company.

Chris: It’s amazing to see our men and women coming back and contributing into our space, which has so much demand and so much need. And it’s such a great way to fulfill the mission of Salute.

Lee: Hi, I’m Lee Kirby, and I’m here today with Chris Crosby to take a moment to recognize and thank him for the support that he’s done for veterans’ initiatives in general, and specifically for Salute. For those that embrace the mission that we have with getting veterans into the data center and act with selflessness and courage to work with us especially early on. We wanted to recognize those and Chris was very fundamental to our success because he helped us in the second year of our formation to give us a chance to prove to an industry leader who does not compromise on quality that our services were strong and that we could deliver those services.

Chris: Lee, thanks so much. It’s really been a pleasure to work with Salute. You know, as a son of a veteran, obviously, what our veterans have done means a lot to me personally and means a lot to our company. We couldn’t be happier to support the efforts that were there. It is a great initiative, great mission that you guys have. And as you said, you guys really deliver, and so we couldn’t be happier to be a partner.