Not Your Father’s Data Center

Not Your Father’s Data Center: Innovations in Generator Land

How did a Texas boy, who swore up and down he’d never leave Texas for Oklahoma, wind up involved with the data storage industry in Oklahoma? Chris Brown, CTO at Uptime Institute, isn’t 100% sure himself, but spending the past 25 years in the Sooner state means something went right. And Brown said the data…

Read More

Latest

Not Your Father's Data Center
Not Your Father’s Data Center Podcast: Data Centers in Space Pt. 2

Rick Ward, CTO, and Founder of Orbits Edge, described how space is becoming increasingly accessible to laypeople. “We’re getting more and more to the place where I can see myself there. And that is a big deal. You don’t have a space-bearing civilization when the only people who go up there are less numerous than…

Read More
Industrial IoT
Not Your Father’s Data Center Podcast by Compass Datacenters: A Look into the Impact of COVID-19 on the Data Center Industry

The data center industry is probably not the first industry one would think of when it comes to changes from the pandemic since data is stored virtually. Tim Huffman, Vice President of CBRE, joined Host Raymond Hawkins, Chief Revenue Officer of Compass Datacenters, to discuss the surprising number of shifts that actually occurred in the…

Read More
Not Your Father's Data Center
Satellites & The Cloud

Data has moved from the building filling mainframes of the 60’s technology to satellite gathering machine learning and AI processing at the speed of light. Megabytes have turned into Petabytes, leaving businesses to absorb the paradigm shift of data collection. In this episode of Not Your Father’s Data Center, host Raymond Hawkins and Doug Mohney,…

Read More
Not Your Father's Data Center
Leadership in an Evolving Workplace

Host Raymond Hawkins discovered that despite lacking formal leadership training, Cy Wakeman, President & Founder of Reality Based Leadership, has written a plethora of books in the leadership genre. As a former counselor in human psychology, Wakeman revamped traditional leadership views. She explained, “I saw the world from a viewpoint of shared accountability at the…

Read More
Not Your Father's Data Center
Not Your Father’s Data Center: Mining for bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies

Fred Thiel, CEO of Marathon Digital Holdings, one of the largest bitcoin mining operations in North America, joined host Raymond Hawkins to discuss cryptocurrency. From blockchain to bitcoin, Thiel covered it all, including all the nooks and crannies in between. “The blockchain is essentially a chain of linked blocks that each block consists of a…

Read More
Not Your Father's Data Center
Concrete Innovations at Compass Datacenters

Nancy Novak, Chief Innovation Officer, Compass Datacenters is a firm believer that innovation comes in different forms, and she knows it’s people, processes and systems that drive innovations. Those three key focuses drive Novak’s work at Compass Datacenters, and she opened up to host Raymond Hawkins about some of the exciting innovations happening at Compass….

Read More

Latest

skilled trades mentorship
Why the Modern Data Center Is Forcing Communities and Policymakers to Rethink Infrastructure
April 21, 2026

Data centers have moved from largely invisible digital infrastructure to a highly visible source of public debate as artificial intelligence accelerates demand for power, fiber, and compute capacity. The modern data center is now being built closer to population centers to support low-latency services, bringing critical infrastructure into direct contact with residential communities for…

Read More
Inside the Spot Freight Shift: How Manifold Is Simplifying a Fragmented Logistics Market
April 21, 2026

The freight market is in the midst of a notable shift. With national tender rejection rates approaching 14% by the end of Q1, freight conditions have shifted back in carriers’ favor, often coinciding with increased activity in the spot market. At the same time, logistics teams are juggling an increasingly fragmented ecosystem of portals, emails,…

Read More
healthcare 2026
Healthcare’s 2026 Reality: Growing Workforce Gaps, Tiered Access, and the Rise of AI Support
April 20, 2026

Healthcare systems are entering 2026 under mounting pressure. A growing, aging population and rising disease burden are colliding with persistent workforce shortages—highlighted by projections that new cancer diagnoses in the U.S. will surpass two million this year alone. The stakes are no longer theoretical: delays in care, limited specialist access, and widening disparities are…

Read More
Mental Health Care
Policy, AI, and New Funding Models Are Reshaping Mental Health Care Delivery
April 16, 2026

Mental health care isn’t a new problem—but it’s finally being treated like an urgent one. After years of being sidelined, the cracks in the system are becoming impossible to ignore: overstretched clinicians, long wait times, and entire communities without consistent access to care. In the U.S., the scale is striking—more than one in five…

Read More
Other Not Your Father's Data Center
A 2020 Year in Review on Digital Strategy Trends
January 12, 2021

Haynes Strader, Vice President of Data Center Solutions, CBRE, returned to Not Your Father’s Data Center for a look back and assessment of one of the craziest years in recent memory. To summarize the market during the pandemic, Strader said, “CBRE had a really busy first quarter, and then, in March, we saw a big…

Read More
A Career Path for Veterans in the Data Center Industry
November 10, 2020

Lee Kirby, Cofounder and Chairman of Salute Mission Critical, wanted to use his 36 years of military experience to help veterans and their families. Drawing upon 30 years of information systems, strategic business development, planning and human resource experience in private and public sectors, Kirby began Salute Mission Critical. Salute’s mission is to provide military…

Read More
The Data Center Outlook for the European Market
October 27, 2020

To get a perspective on how the data center industry is faring in European markets during the pandemic, host Raymond Hawkins tapped Andrew Jay, Head of EMEA Data Centre Solutions, Advisory & Transaction Services for CBRE, to help him unpack what’s happening. The need for co-location space is growing in Europe, as demands for data…

Read More
Adventures in Technology with DCD’s Peter Judge (Part 2)
September 22, 2020

In the second half of a two-part discussion on technology, Peter Judge, Global Editor for DatacenterDynamics, and host Raymond Hawkins turned their attention on the data center industry, the impact technology advancements have on it and the evolving role of the DatacenterDynamics’ publication. One of the cornerstones of DatacenterDynamics’ success is its events, which they’ve…

Read More
Adventures in Technology with DCD’s Peter Judge (Part 1)
September 9, 2020

Peter Judge may have started his education journey with a degree in physics from Cambridge University, but most will know him from his work as a writer in the technology space. His current role is as the Global Editor for DataCenterDynamics, and he shared his experience and thoughts on technology and datacenters with Raymond Hawkins….

Read More
Sustainability is More than Green Power
July 21, 2020

As governments and corporations look for ways to reduce their carbon footprint, Eric Dunford, Director of Sustainability for CarbonCure, knows of a solution to help these entities meet their needs when it comes to construction projects. Dunford joined host Raymond Hawkins to talk about CarbonCure’s process for introducing recycled CO2 Into fresh concrete to reduce…

Read More
Necessity is the Mother of Innovation
May 26, 2020

With data centers going up quickly all over the country, quality control and the commissioning process are vital steps to making sure everything is getting done correctly. Yet the typically high-touch process has been complicated by social distancing regulations and other health precautions that are part of doing business during the COVID-19 pandemic. When Compass…

Read More
Why Water Use Can Be As Important As Energy Consumption
May 22, 2020

When choosing a location, data centers often look for a location close to their end customers and one where there’s cheap electricity. Water was an afterthought, said Pedro Sancha, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Nalco Water, but that’s beginning to change. With water needed to cool the data center, companies were bringing in…

Read More
The Myth of Data Center Inefficiency
May 4, 2020

With their constantly whirring server fans and enormous cooling systems in cavernous buildings, data centers seem to be sucking up a lot of energy and contributing more than their fair share to climate change. But are they? Dr. Eric Masanet and several colleagues decided to put it to the test. What they found is that,…

Read More