We ‘Deep Dive’ with Giuliano Di Vitantonio, CEO, AtlasEdge, who tells us about life inside and outside the office.
What first made you think of a career in technology/data centres?
I was 18 years old when I made the decision to study Electrical Engineering (with a specialisation in Telecommunications) at the University of Bologna. Since that moment, I have been involved in the technology sector – starting out my career at Hewlett-Packard and then moving into various roles in software and into the data centre space in the past 30 years. The pace of change and amount of innovation in this industry has been astonishing and it’s enabled me to enjoy a truly varied career across five countries. One thing is for sure, in this line of work, nothing stands still for long!
What would you describe as your most memorable achievement in the data centre industry?
I have never been more excited about an opportunity than I am about AtlasEdge, and I am very proud of what we have achieved so far. We are about to celebrate our second anniversary as a company and have made considerable progress towards realising our goal of creating Europe’s leading Edge platform. The combined expertise and tireless work of our outstanding team, alongside a series of highly strategic acquisitions, has enabled us to rapidly build a high-quality portfolio of 100+ sites across 12 countries.
What do you think is the current hot talking point within the data centre space?
It won’t surprise you to hear me say this, but I believe that Edge computing is enabling the next great wave of innovation. We’re still in the early days but the prospect and opportunity to capture such vast demand is quite staggering. I often compare the current stage of Edge infrastructure to where we were a decade or so ago with the cloud, which today drives most investments in data centres and connectivity. I would expect Edge to follow a very similar pattern and to complement cloud deployments in the emerging cloud-Edge architecture.
What do you currently identify as the major areas of investment in your industry?
The market trends and in-depth customer conversations all point to significant investment in both the cloud and the Edge, with a noticeable shift towards the cloud-Edge architecture that I mentioned earlier. While today the bulk of investments are concentrated in a dozen major metros across the world, as more workloads get pushed to the Edge, we will see rapid growth in data centres located in Tier 2, Tier 3 and even Tier 4 markets.
The other key factor is the rise of AI, which is already injecting a lot of excitement into the IT industry. Initially, the main beneficiary is the chip manufacturers because of the sheer volume of data processing that is involved. As more use cases emerge, the architecture for AI applications will evolve and expand, thus driving a significant portion of the investments in digital infrastructure.
What are the region-specific challenges you encounter in your role?
As a pan-European platform, we have our fair share of region-specific challenges. From navigating the various EU directives to national laws and data sovereignty barriers, we must employ a very specific approach depending on which country we’re operating in. This diverse approach is also an opportunity – at AtlasEdge alone we have colleagues from 30+ nationalities and a management team that has collectively lived and worked in eight different European countries. This gives us an edge (pun intended) over the competition.
What changes to your job role have you seen in the last year and how do you see these developing in the coming months?
The industry has faced a lot of headwinds in the last 12 months: increased cost of capital, supply chain disruption and high energy costs. While some of these are slowly stabilising, it’s safe to say that we won’t be returning to the way things were. But these are the moments where strong companies can emerge, and at AtlasEdge we are in a great position to continue expanding a business that is centred on understanding and capturing customer demand.
What style of management philosophy do you employ with your current position?
I’ve been fortunate to learn a lot from some great leaders over the past three decades and I have always tried to channel the best of these lessons into my leadership style. I am a big believer in empowering those around me – it is often understated how much people rise to the challenge when they’re given greater responsibility and the opportunity to expand.
You will also always hear me talk about the customer. I have a relentless focus on understanding and serving customer needs in the most effective way, and this is a core value that I have sought to instil into the AtlasEdge culture from day one. Two years into our journey, we find ourselves supporting 800+ customers across Europe. This success has been founded on an unwavering focus on understanding our customer’s use cases and how they are looking to deploy workloads.
How do you deal with stress and unwind outside the office?
Here I will have to nod to my Italian heritage. A good meal with fine wine and friends is my ideal wind-down.
