Not Your Father’s Data Center - The Foundations of Digital Infrastructure with George Rockett

Episode Date: February 22, 2024

In this engaging episode, Raymond Hawkins, the Chief Revenue Officer at Compass, is joined by George Rockett, the founder of DatacenterDynamics & Co-Founder of Yotta.George shares his journey from being a humble advertising salesperson to the inception of DatacenterDynamics magazine in 1998. Their conversation unfolds to cover the evolution of enterprise data centers, the burst of the .com bubble, and the concept of zero downtime. The historical context of data centers and the early days of technology are discussed, shedding light on the industry's development and perception over time.With some fantastic analogies, the episode delves into topics such as systems thinking, integrating polymaths to address industry challenges, and the urgency for quicker action due to vast opportunities. George presents his innovative endeavor, Yotta, and stresses the unification of language and communication within the digital infrastructure industry. George’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/george-rockett-b18a3b4/?originalSubdomain=uk

The two most disliked things in the world at the moment are data centers and nuclear. And we that know think that together they're amazing. And they are amazing. All right. Welcome to another edition of Not Your Father's Data Center. I am Raymond Hawkins, the Chief Revenue Officer here at Compass. Today, joining you from our Dallas headquarters. And we are joined by the founder of Data Center Dynamics, our friend

of the program, George Rocket, who is calling in from London, England. George, how you doing, bud? Yeah, I'm really, really good. I'm really happy to be on this podcast today. I'm usually on the other side, Raymond. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're usually getting to drive and ask all the questions today. You're going to have to do all the talking.

Let's talk about a few things. Let's talk about you a little bit. Let's talk about data center dynamics, which is how I think most of us know who you are. And if I remember right, I do my homework. You founded the magazine when you were 14? 14 or something? How old were you? Close.

Close. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks a lot. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

All right. Good. Good. It was in the 90s though, right? 98 or 96? 98. 98. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I was sitting in short trousers. Yeah. Yeah. That's 96, 98. 98. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was sitting in short trousers. Yeah, yeah. That's good. Okay, good. Still in school. Excellent.

And then you're kicking around this new idea that we'll talk about after we get a little bit about you and a little bit about data center dynamics. I want to make sure I say it right. Is it Yota? No, we've been talking about this. No, apparently it's a short O. It's Yota. Yota.

Okay. Yota. I say it in an English way, but anyway, you can say Yotta as well. Everybody's saying it different, but we know what it means. Got it. All right. Yotta. All right. Well, I'm from deep South Georgia, so folks have a hard time understanding me anyway. So just whatever you call it, we'll go with that.

All right. So data center dynamics. It's the late 90s. The internet is barely a thing, and you decide, hey, we better talk about these things. And you start up a magazine. That's where we're going. But before we get to there, tell us about you. How'd you get in the publishing business? How'd you get in the data center business? Is London home? All that stuff. Let's learn a little about you, George. So let's start with me. So London is home. I think for a lot of my life, London wasn't meant to be my home. I was meant to live somewhere else, but I ended up just traveling the world and living here. So for a good many years, when we started working with DCD and doing events all the way around the world, I spend three quarters of the year abroad. So it's kind of like I've lived abroad, but I've never really lived abroad.

And I've actually lived here within the same mile now since 1995. Whoa. Oh, my goodness. There you go. Figuring your way around now? Yeah, just about. I can get to the airport. I tell you that.

I can get to the airport. And back you that. I can get to the airport. And back again. Good, good. And I've been here so long, they found different ways of getting to the airport. Large bits of infrastructure have been built. Billions have been spent in getting me to the airport in different ways. It's amazing. I appreciate your government making sure you could get there expeditiously.

So you asked how I got into publishing. That's really, I think that's how I got into data centers. But I was a humble advertising salesperson for many, many years. When I left university, I didn't know what I wanted to do. And I did an arts degree. I did history and modern languages. So nothing technical. I had a business partner at the time.

And well, for many years, a guy called Dan Scarborough. And we thought, if we can sell advertising space, we can sell anything. And this opportunity came up to sell what at the time was Colo Space. And we thought, this is like a magazine, it's blank. I mean, you just get somebody to think about what they want to put in there. And do you know what? It was so tough. Nobody even knew what this was. It wasn't a thing yet. We were talking about disaster recovery centers and exchanges doing minutes exchange. And it was just the early days.

It was not the same as selling the inside back cover. It was not the same. It was different yeah but we saw an opportunity right at that time that this was going to be big and we published the magazine and that was in 1998 the first magazine that led to many magazines around co-location and then the dot-com bubble burst and it was like well where's this colo going and it was that moment of realization that actually the enterprise data center had been around forever and it was evolving at the same pace and if you remember at that time everything was about banks right banking data

centers and things like that and and as the internet grew and services grew and being online grew they needed to grow and they were the first big users. And at that time, we changed Colo Network into zero downtime. It was like, what's the end goal? Zero downtime. And out of zero downtime was born the idea of doing events called data center dynamics. And 23 years into doing events, we come up to the modern day. That's kind of like been my career. Holy cow. So you talk about, I liked you made a comment, and you said the enterprise data center had always been around.

I joke with people, especially my children. I say, guys, you know, when I first started working in technology, we had posters in the office that said, someday there'll be a computer on every desk. That's how early I got in the technology business. We were telling, we were walking in and telling people to buy computers for the first time. And they're like, what, what? Well, I don't need a computer. I can do it all right here in my ledger. Why would I do a computer? Right. And to your point back when we used to call it DP, right? He works in data processing, right?

And it was in a room somewhere and you handed a stack of green bar through a wooden slot in the wall. And so we've always had, I say always, for my adult and professional life, there's always been a data center, but not thought about the way. And you alluded to that, that there had been an- You're showing your age, Raymond. That's right. I'm definitely showing my age i'm gonna get emails about what's a green bar report they're gonna be like what did you say now if you're listening to this and not seeing this maybe raymond's dying

his hair because i have been accused of that yes i have been accused. Yeah, wooden slots. And of course, I remember, we're going way back. I remember sending a box of cards that you program. That's how you did your program. Hey, I've written my program here. Run this cards through the machine. So yeah, we've had data processing for a long time. But yeah, that's awesome that in the late 90s, you're going, wait a minute, this thing might catch on.

If you think back to that time, it might catch on. I remember we were selling large, big double-page spread ads to Exodus. And it's at that time that you start getting, in a way, the motherships of the business that we see today. Yeah. People that came out with it. And it was, in a way, it was a total flop, right? But it was you know in a way it was a total flop right but it was amazing it kind of like bore the sales people the engineers and network people in this kind of like new world so it was an interesting laid the foundation yeah yeah yeah global cross you bring

up exodus i think a global crossing i think of some of those early guys that were doing things and said hey we got to change this and even though their business model didn't work, it's clearly the foundation for what all of us are working on today. And we still call the data centers by their names, right? So if you're in London and you're down in Canary Wharf, you go, there's the Global Crossing data center. That's right. That's exactly right. Yeah, yeah, exactly right. That's right. Oh, that was an Exodus building. That's exactly right. Yeah. Yeah. Funny. I'm sorry. I'm going to take us on a book tour briefly since you said your degree is in history.

Have you read Tubes, the book that's about the beginning of the data center business? I think I read half of it a long, long time ago when it first came out. Yeah. It was probably. I'm saying that because I'm really bad at completing books. Yeah. So I'm just saying that. It's fair.

I want to say the book's probably about 10 years old, but you talk about those early days. The book tells a bit of the story of how did we get to the data center business that everyone that listens to our podcast is a part of today. So 23 years, before we get into me mispronouncing Yotta again, let's do a little bit more on dcd 23 years of doing events around the world give me highs lows two or three lessons learned i mean you've gotten to see some stuff in a quarter century of of doing events around data processing

all the way through to data centers today and cloud computing and AI now. A thousand lessons learned. Some I wish I didn't have to learn because they're about business, right? And being young and being in business. There was a time when we were doing 60 events around the world and we had teams speaking in Russian. We had China teams. It was like we had this flag to plant saying data center and country

of the world and people would wait for us to come. It was, you know, they didn't even consider themselves a data center market. We would go there. And, you know, I remember the early heady days with your own CEO, Chris Crosby, we'd be flying everywhere. This was so new. And we evolved at the market and we started doing training. We were always a media player.

Events changed. And we've always kind of like been listening to the market and catering to what the market needs at the same time as trying to manage being a business, right? Manage being profitable. And there's been some really difficult times. But we've always believed or I've always believed in data centers. It's a gift that keeps on giving wherever, wherever I go with people that I've known for a long time, we pinch ourselves. We go, is this still a thing? And then we get into the conversation.

No, it's more than a thing. We're just at the beginning of a thing. Yes. Yes. It's mind blowing. Yeah, it is. I think George, I think, I think you raise a great point. And a lot of our listeners, I think, feel this too, right? There's this talk about sometimes, hey, where are we in the life cycle of this business? And we're still in a baseball now, we're still in the early innings. We're still in the first or second inning of what this is going to be, of what truly building a global digital infrastructure that supports the way the world works is still in the early stages. You know, as we started going down the Yalta angle, we talked a little bit about airports, but I think about things that are infrastructure today, railroads, right? We built those 150 years ago, right? And all of digital history is only about 60 years

old from the very first. So we're still early in this process and we're early in converting all of the things that we do and making them digital. And I'm going to bring up one passion thing and I promise we'll get back to Yotta. I think that our industry gets jabbed, elbowed in the ribs a bit about how much energy we use. That's definitely an issue. And one of the things I hope that I can help do, or at least talk about and bring some awareness and maybe compass, is it's not that the data industry is a big user of energy, right? Every time we do a development, every time one of my competitors, our industry does, the way it gets published is it's going to use 150 megawatts and that could

power a small village in Scotland for 10 years, right? I mean, that could power 8,500 homes. The writers try to relate it back to a household and how long, and they're trying to say, wow, this is using up a lot of power because people don't understand what megawatts or gigawatts are. I would just say the data center is not doing that. The data center is providing a service to the world that utilizes energy. Now, we want to be good stewards of that energy and we want to use the energy as efficiently as we can. And we want to source it energy as efficiently as we can and we want to source it as globally aware as we can, but we're providing a service. We get the power bill. The power bill comes to us because we own the meter, but we're really providing a service to the globe. And trying

to think about, George, having you been in this business long enough, the question is, what's the right way for us as an industry to talk about energy? Oh, wow. And specifically our use of energy. This is a thorny issue. First, people bandy numbers around. We use energy as an industry, but what we use them for are buildings without windows that people can point out. So these buildings can't stand up for themselves. If it was a car manufacturing plant employing 15,000 people, nobody's going to question that.

They can see it. They can see people going in and out. It looks like it's part of humanity and part of society, right? And they can get in and drive the cars that come out of the end of the supply chain. Of course. They get it. They get it. There's a physicality and an understanding.

There's a human connection. But to data centers, there isn't that. Now, this issue, telecoms doesn't get it. There's a physicality and an understanding. There's a human connection. But to data centers, there isn't that. Now, this issue, telecoms doesn't get this. The satellite industry doesn't get this. Because data centers are part of digital infrastructure. It's just the only part of digital infrastructure that's not abstract. A network's abstract. The cables are under the ground,

but it's the only visible part of it. So actually, it needs to be looked at in the context of everything. It's kind of like the data center industry takes the butt of everything. It's like, well, it's all your fault. Well, no, it's connected to things. And these servers are bought by other people.

The silicon's made by other people. And that's a bit about why I've spun up this new gig alongside DC, DCD called Yotta, right? To try and create a much bigger platform around digital infrastructure. So let's talk about it. I would agree with you, right? The abstract nature, as you describe, of a network, right? The guy who runs fiber from Dallas to IED,

no one sees his thing and no one worries about the energy that's used to light up that fiber, right? But they see the building on either end and the building got the power bill. And so the building's the guy who's eating up all the energy. And we've got to come up with a way to talk about the industry differently and the services that that the industry provides not just the energy that the industry is consuming and and i think i think you see that and feel that with your yada conversation so so tell us a little bit about what you're doing that's it that's exactly it right i don't think i i'm many data center events around the world right i organize them tens of thousands of people come to them and we get up i get up and we say we're an industry we're the data center industry i don't think we

are and i think that's the problem i think we're part of the digital infrastructure industry this is like saying we are the airport terminal building industry no we're not part of the aviation industry and airport terminals a necessary part of aviation. A runway is as well. An airport control tower is as well. And so is the manufacture of engines and the making of sandwiches that we on the airplane. It's part of aviation. What's happened is IT is so young.

It is siloed, right? And data center is one part of it. And the data center part of it translates a thing called a megawatt command, and we deal in megawatts. And they're enormous, and they're big buildings, and they consume lots of energy, and it's a megawatt command. And mechanical engineers, electrical engineers, civil engineers, they all get together to build this thing. But left of that megawatt command are all the other silos. I like to call them tribes because I believe it's about how you feel tribally. You know, I talk about megawatts.

Well, I talk about mega flops. I talk about megabits. They've all got their own education way, pathway to get to talking about that. So they create their unique language. But all of them are translating an IT capacity requirement into digital infrastructure. All of them, whether you're in the cloud tribe and you're sourcing new contracts, whether you're in network, telecoms, telecoms split the wireless group, you know, whether you're in satellite,

you've all got a different language, but your end goal is the same and within the enterprise you're competing right now this is currently i think unique to the it world because i don't think it happened or maybe it did happen in uh in aviation but i'd like to i'd like to give you this analogy imagine an a380 airbus the largest airplane, double-decker one that we know. Imagine that being sent to its first customers and the pilot radioing ahead saying, did you make a longer runway and a larger passenger terminal and a more robust runway for the wait? And the traffic controller going, no, we didn't get the memo. Oh, we can't land the plane. It would be impossible.

It could never happen. And you ask, why could it never happen? Well, it could never happen because Airbus took 10 years to build the engine. Airbus Rolls-Royce took 10 years to build the Brent engine. They wouldn't have done that development without knowledge of the future. It didn't happen because air runways had to get bigger. It didn't happen because aviation's vertically integrated as an industry. It's had a long time. It's had over a hundred years to do this, but it didn't really need to get serious until the sixties with the jet engine. Because

the jet engine changed everything up until that point that you propeller engines right from the wright brothers all the way through two world wars where completely different types of airplanes were built they were still same fundamentally from paper to aluminium to bigger propellers to different, to different fuel types. But it was just iterative design. Then a jet engine comes along and it all changes. My hypothesis is that we are living the jet engine moment in digital infrastructure. It's been okay for everybody to be siloed.

It's been okay. Everybody's got on with it. It's been a lot of trust built up. We don't need to know what's on the other side of the abstraction layer. Somebody else has got that covered. Everybody over provisions a little bit. We buy an extra bit of network. We buy some more compute. We build a bit more of the data center. We don't use all of it, right? Okay. So all that over provisioning is there and it's all okay and it works. and i think right now we've got to this point with maybe it doesn't work with what's going to come up with what we're faced with now so that's

why i've developed yotta alongside dcd because dcd won't stretch to all of those other silos to all of those other people um so i think we need a new catalyst for a new conversation and if we said we're just at the beginning right now of this industry, this is a catalyst for a conversation that might take the next 10, 20, 30 years, I think, of how you vertically integrate this thing. And I remember I was speaking with you before, you know, we spoke about, you know, Day Center as an asset class, you know, as an infrastructure asset.

And I think that's so true. I got to say, George, this is as good an analogy. I always find that the smartest people make hard things sound simple. And your description of the airline industry and your example of the A380 and the jet engine, I think it fits perfectly. And I loved it. You kind of sped through it. So I'm going to back up to it.

Nobody says I'm in the runway concrete business. No one says that. No one says I'm in the airport jetway business. I just do jetways. I'm sorry. I'm just the jetway guy. Don't talk to me about what goes on either end. I'm just the jetway guy. And, and, and in our industry that happens, right? I'm just the jetway guy. And in our industry, that happens, right? I'm just the land guy. I'm just the power guy. I'm just the network guy. I'm just the fiber guy. Oh, I'm just the dark fiber guy, right? And our industry is completely siloed. I like that word of, right? We've got all these slices of solutions. And so far, we've ultimately aggregated and, to keep the analogy going, made an airplane that can fly.

But we've done it by hook or by crook rather than by the vertical integration. And I'd add to your vertical integration phrase, the shared roadmap, right? Because not only are they vertically integrated, but Airbus asked Rolls-Royce to build that engine because they shared with them, hey, here's why I need an engine that does this, because I'm going to build this plane that looks like this. And then they went and talked to Jetway producers and said, hey, I don't need one that goes up 30 feet. I need one that goes up 45 feet or whatever it is. Right. And they started to share a product roadmap and integrate that product roadmap with each other, which our industry doesn't do. So tell me how Yotta helps. But, Raymond, there are people that do this. Hyperscalers haven't become hyperscalers without not talking to each other within the silos.

That's right. It's about systems thinking. And they've absorbed these people. It's about polymaths. You know, you must meet these people they're your clients and they're like they've got an electrical engineering degree and an electronics degree and they know about all sorts of things right there are people that can do this and there's people that have done this in other industry sectors which is really interesting about data centers at the moment we're trying to bring in people that can look at this in

a different way as well so it's not not happening right it just has to happen a little bit quicker because i think there's so much opportunity so when i pitch my idea to people at the moment you know i've built this phenomenal advisory board i've spent literally the last eight months evangelizing this idea where people go yeah they say they ask that question that you've just asked well what are you going to do george fix it come on george fix it yeah all i can do is bring people together that's saying yeah because when you bring people together that's saying yeah great things happen and as a conference organizer an event producer what you do is you try and create that special source that makes this hamburgers event better that everybody starts talking about and there the action starts happening so you know

in year one for yotta this event's going to be in vegas at the mgm grand in october we've actually taken away one of the west coast dcd events to make room for it so we don't overburden the calendars we've got this amazing conference program we've pulled in amazing we've pulled in you know on our advisory board we've got renee j james the founder of ampere computing the ex-president of of intel all the way to the other side to the founder and coo of oklo that's likely to be one of the first people to put a small modular reactor in a data center campus. I hope from what I read, you know, I put all of these people together

with telecoms people and everybody else that I don't think has been done before. Not in the idea of bringing them together to talk about the future. People come together to deal make about what's happening this year, but not to talk about the future. So I'm hoping deal make about what's happening this year, but not to talk about the future. So I'm hoping that will be a catalyst for this conversation.

So George, there's two things you said in there that I want to try to grab a thread and talk about. As I'm listening to you talk about putting them all in the room, everybody that says, yeah, and let's get them in the room and talk about stuff. The first one I thought about from an integration perspective is nuclear, right? I think, and I don't want to cause a dust up about energy, but I think personally, the answer to what is a green solution that will give us sufficient power to help us continue to provide the digitization that the world is clearly wanting to consume, right? We need more power. Well, how do we do that without doing bad things to the air that we breathe or the water that we drink? I think nuclear is the answer for that.

I'm admitting not to be an electrical scientist or an environmental scientist, but I think when everything gets boiled down, we're going to want some of those, right? We're going to want some more nuclear reactors. with not just the SMR through the app provider, but everybody in the middle getting together and going, okay, I'm not going to buy it from SRP in Arizona. I'm going to put a reactor. I get that one piece of integration, but there's integration opportunity for everything else too, right? And because energy is a hot button issue, that one seems easy. Put me in the room with the guy who's making SMRs and let's talk about how to do development together. Now I don't have to go to the state's grid and get the power.

I don't have to go to Ireland's grid where they can't have any more power. I'm going to show up with my power generator on a truck, right? And we're going to drop it over there. That one to me is an easy one to understand, but it's every layer of the business. That's what I hear you say. But it's not, it's easy. But I mean, I joke about this, right? The two most disliked things in the world at the moment are data centers and nuclear. And we that know think that together they're amazing. And they are amazing. Everyone else, everyone else, but they are incredible. But I

mean, joking aside, if you listen to Sam Altman at Davos the other week, you know, he's saying, we cannot grow this world of compute of where we know it can take us without energy solutions. You look at him, he's involved in, well, in Oklo. He's a main backer of Oklo. He's also looking at the back of the new fusion company as well so you know it's

interesting you know of ai and trying to come up with the solution it looks like data center digital infrastructure is at the most it's the nexus of this energy transition that we can have right and that's what's really really exciting yeah so so when Skynet takes over, they're going to be able to point to this recording and hold you, our children responsible for being at the point where it all happened. If we could just go back in time and kill Raymond and George's parents so that they wouldn't have gotten nuclear and data centers together, Skynet wouldn't exist. You see? Do you know what? Luckily enough, it's bigger than you and me. I think it's real. I think it's real.

And I imagine behind closed doors or even more open doors, you saw with Microsoft hiring a head of nuclear. This is open language. If I'd mentioned nuclear five years ago on a DCT stage. Three years ago, George. Yeah. Even three. Yeah. Yeah. A couple of years ago, a year and a half ago, I started saying, who in the room thinks this is a good idea? And everybody's arms shot up. If somebody's arm wasn't up, people would be looking at them saying, what's wrong with you? And from the permitting side and

the technology side, this is moving really fast. Yeah. Big stuff. Interesting stuff. I think what I hear you saying is, Raymond, I found that when I put people that are in their own silos doing things that are tangentially related to each other, I put them all in the same room, good things happen. And that's what I did with DCD for 25 years. That's what I'm trying to do with Yotta. Absolutely. But it's about language, right?

It's finding the language of each of the groups, and sometimes it's got to be turned on its head for the other group to understand. It's like a data center engineer thumping the book, saying we need to tackle the one in PUE completely. It needs to be more efficient on the compute side, but if you say we need to tackle the one in the pue to that other room of people they won't know what you're talking about yeah if you reframe it and you change it and you put a financial aspect on it suddenly it's like oh yeah

totally so you've got to find these points of commonality this language in a way right now i'd liken it to uh the tower of babel right everybody's running around shouting yeah right and they're like this is the one god this is the one thing right and in fact they're all kind of like saying the same thing but differently and none of them understand each other right right and that's right for just doing things better if we're already doing things well just normal normalize, align, get the language together, and we'll do even better. Yeah.

You said something, and I may steal it if you let me. You said that there is the aviation industry, right? It's an aviation industry. We don't talk about the guy. And we can't say I'm in the dark fiber business, and I'm in the lit fiber business, say i'm in the dark fiber business and i'm in the lit fiber business and i'm in the entitlement business and i'm in the concrete business and i'm in the rack business and i'm in the fit out business and i'm in the server business and i'm in the data center no no we're in the digital infrastructure industry and i think that i think that because language matters right

we're talking about people being able to if every imagine if everybody said that suddenly they're just the standing of it would go up everybody would say you'd go wow i talked to so many people that are part of this a part of this industry must be enormous well yes it is actually the entire modern world relies on this amen how you're right and so i think we just got to talk the game up but everybody's been so busy in their own silos they i don't think they've had time i spoke with this lovely guy the other day in austria it's another story it's from a business called cerebite putting data on ceramics a whole other story but he said he looked from outside in said, it looks like the IT industry is so young, it's not had a chance to think long-term, he said. And it was like, it sums it up.

Yes. Yeah. I mean, I joked at the beginning about having posters in my office about someday there'll be a computer on every desk. That's one grown man's working life. And literally there was no, I'm going to tell you a funny story. This will fit in your, in your Sarah bite question about how young her industry is. So my kids are in their early twenties and I make them watch old movies because I enjoy the old movies and I want them to have the experience of what good movie making is, you know, a seminal work, Karate Kid. I mean, let's just, you know, who can forget Ralph Macchio in the, in the eighties, right? I mean, let's just, you know, who can forget Ralph Macchio in the 80s, right? I mean, it's just world-class moviemaking. Pat Morita, I mean, just, I could go on. But my children, this is now

15 years ago, and we're watching it on a VHS tape, and the movie's playing, and if you'll remember, Daniel's mom leaves New Jersey and drives a station wagon across to the West Coast because she's going to get a technology job in the computers. And Daniel comes into the restaurant because his mom's working in the restaurant because the technology job isn't scheduled to start yet. And Daniel is saying, mom, I hate California. I'm getting my butt kicked every day and let's go back to New Jersey. And his mom sits him down in the restaurant. She goes, Daniel, we're not going back to New Jersey. I've got great news. They've asked for me to be in the management trainee program

here at the restaurant. And Daniel loses his shit. And he's like, mom, we moved out here to go to the computer business. You can work at a restaurant in New Jersey. And she looks at Daniel and she says, Daniel, no one makes any money in computers. Now, why do I tell that silly story?

Because it was written by a writer who knew that everybody would just go, yeah, of course, no one makes money in computers. As a part of Americana and as a part of cinema history, I stopped it the first time I met my kids. Rewind that. What did she say? Because I'm at the time making a career selling technology. And to talk about how young our industry is,

completely acceptable to write into the script of a movie just 40 years ago that no one makes money in technology. I'd rather be the assistant manager at TGI Fridays than be in the computer business. And that that was viewed as normal. That's how young our industry is, George. That's incredible. I mean, as you said that, the chaotic, and I was just, you know, wax on, wax off when

he meets Mr. Young. Everything, that growing up story, being bullied, overcoming it, and it's completely went over my head, that bit that you spoke about. But actually, if you're looking at cinema history and IT history, that would be something that you could write a thesis on, right? Well, that's my point. That's my point is I'm built a career selling ones and zeros and the equipment that work on them. And I was struck. I'm showing the movie because I want my kids to learn wax on, wax off, and young love and standing up for you. And I hear that line and it's exactly what you said. Your friend telling you your industry is just too young. It is. It is. Our

industry is young and it's maturing and it's developing. We don't even know the right way to talk about ourselves. And I've been talking about, we got to say energy differently. And you've just opened my thought process, George. No, no, we got to say we're in the digital infrastructure industry. I'm not in the data center business. I'm in the digital infrastructure business. And here are all of my friends who are in it too. That is a great way to think about it.

And that's Yotta, Raymond. It's going to try and create a stage that says this is the digital infrastructure industry. And a yottabyte is the biggest amount of data that you could ever conceive, the largest number, a thousand zettabytes. And it's about that data. And everybody supports it. Everyone. Oh, it wasn't? You just mispronounced Toyota.

It has actual meaning. I got it. Very good. Well, I'll say this. I love the way you phrased it. I love the ambition in it. I love the passion for it. I used to tell people all the time, you know, Hey, if you struggle with what our industry does, just tell me what you want to quit doing on here. You know, you want to stop ordering your plane tickets. You, you don't want to get a car ride. You don't want to watch a movie. Just tell me what you want to stop doing on here. And that's a cheeky way to say it.

I love your approach, which is to say, no, no, our industry is just kind of mature. And we've got to learn that we're an industry providing an answer. We're not 47 silos. Absolutely. And you raised your phone there and said, oh, we just want this to work. Over Christmas, I had some building work done. I had a lot of guests over in the house and a trip switch went right, a breaker switch, and the lights went out. None of the kids cared. Their phones were powered up. They're on the phone.

It's like, if that went out, it would be a completely different story. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hear, hear. Hear, hear. Well, George, it's been great having you. We really, really appreciate it. Thank you for spending a few minutes with us. We look forward to talking again. I enjoyed it so much. I'm going to have to get details from you on the first Yotta get together because I got to figure now that we got to be there. So we'll get that offline from you. We definitely want to hear about that. And let's put this one in the can and look forward to talking again and and recording with you again in the future thank you george brilliant raymond thanks a lot for the day i love being interviewed it's great fun awesome