Edge Data Center with CoreSite’s Maile Kaiser

Scott Kinka (00:02): 

Hi, and welcome to this episode of the Bridge. My guest on this episode is Maile Kaiser who is the Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing at CoreSite. How are you this evening Maile? 

Maile Kaiser (00:17): 

Hi Scott. Nice to see you. Thanks so much for having me on your podcast today. 

Scott Kinka (00:21): 

Absolutely. Now we’ll just jump right into being personal here, cuz this is what I do. So, Maile, they have all seen the spelling of Maile. Can you explain it a little bit? I certainly wouldn’t have spelled it that way. Tell me more 

Maile Kaiser (00:34): 

<Laugh>. Sure, yes. It’s always a little bit concerning when you see it for the first time and you’re not quite sure how to say it, but it’s actually Hawaiian. I’m not, as you can tell, Hawaiian, however, I was very lucky to have the name and it actually means aloha and peace. So it’s a fun name to have. Not very many people have it. 

Maile’s Journey at CoreSite 

Scott Kinka (00:59): 

Well, it’s good to know that this is gonna be a peaceful conversation then. Yes. So I’m just lining that up and expecting to get somewhere. I appreciate that. How long have you been at CoreSite? 

Maile Kaiser (01:07): 

I’ve been at CoreSite for almost 11 years, and in the technology sales background for much longer than that, 

Scott Kinka (01:17): 

Care to share any places before those? 

Maile Kaiser (01:21): 

I started my career at Oracle and then moved on to AboveNet for many years and then went over to IO data centers and been at CoreSite for the last 11.  

Scott Kinka (01:33): 

Gotcha. Always in the role that you’re in now? 

Maile Kaiser (01:38): 

No, I started in sales and then went into management and run sales and marketing for CoreSite now. Sales for the last five years and sales and marketing for the last year. 

Scott Kinka (01:55): 

Got it. Interesting. Marketing post-pandemic, huh?  

Maile Kaiser (02:01): 

We have a fantastic team, so I’m very lucky. 

Scott Kinka (02:05): 

Certainly. I understand it. We, hear a lot about CoreSite out in the market. I’m gonna give you an opportunity to give us that commercial, but not until we learn a little bit more. So we know the name is, is Hawaiian, and we know a little bit about your background from a work perspective. Care to share anymore, where do you live? Family interests? 

Maile Kaiser (02:25): 

Absolutely. so I live in Manhattan Beach, California. Yeah. And I’m actually a fourth-generation Angelina, a sixth-generation southern California girl. So I think I’m one of the few out there. I have three wonderful kids, two boys, and a girl: 19, 16, and 14, and two awesome dogs that you might hear, but hopefully, you don’t <laugh>. And interests. I love to travel, love to watch my kids in sports, and just really enjoy what I do.  

Scott Kinka (03:06): 

That’s amazing. That’s amazing. It won’t be the first time we’ve heard dogs on the pod, so I wouldn’t worry about that. You, you mentioned travel so that, I think that’s a good segue. Does your job at CoreSite give you an opportunity to travel a bit? 

Maile Kaiser (03:22): 

It does. Actually, before the pandemic I was traveling quite a bit, probably twice a month. Fortunately, I’ve been able to scale that back and probably travel once a month but to wonderful places. Most, you know, every market that CoreSite is in is a great place to travel to. And then for personal travel, I love to go to Hawaii, so shocking. Shocking. I know <laugh>. 

Scott Kinka (03:51): 

So give us the spread then, because you talked about exciting locations with CoreSite, so before we get the CoreSite story, give me the locations. How far is the spread, global, or domestic? 

Maile Kaiser (04:01): 

Sure, sure. So CoreSite is US based, but we were just recently acquired last December 2021 by American Tower. American Tower is one of the largest global REITs. So they have a global footprint all over the world. And we rolled up into their US division. So CoreSite is US-based today. 

Scott Kinka (04:23): 

Got you. Okay. Well, let’s, let’s do that. I mean, we could explore American Tower and that whole relationship makes sense. I think people get it. But talk about CoreSite. So you run sales and marketing, and nobody is better. To give us the pitch. Tell us about CoreSite. 

Who is CoreSite? 

Maile Kaiser (04:39): 

Sure, thank you. So CoreSite is, we own and operate data centers around the U.S. We’re in 10 major markets. We really are focused on interconnection-rich data center campuses. So in each one of our markets, we’re really trying to bring a community of companies together to interoperate their workloads. So from your network provider to your service provider, your cloud provider, your enterprise, your managed services provider, anybody that has a piece of that digital workflow, how to bring them together and interconnect within our data center or around our data centers. And so that’s really the focus. We try to make sure that our customers can scale with us in the communities that we’re in, and then also be able to reach the major cloud providers and service providers that they need to connect to, to support their hybrid infrastructure. 

Scott Kinka (05:32): 

Gotcha. I want you to say something again, and I was making a mental note. You said interconnected-rich, or… gimme that phrase one more time. 

What are Interconnected-Rich Data Center Campuses? 

Maile Kaiser (05:43): 

Sure. Interconnected-rich data center campuses. So, okay. What do I mean by that? 

Scott Kinka (05:49): 

<Laugh>? No, I get that. I liked it. It was the thing that popped out at me. Let me, let me read that back then. I should think of that as you know, people need hybrid environments. You are operating data centers and you want to put them in places where it’s easy for them to tie those workloads to everything else they have going on. How’d I do?  

Maile Kaiser (06:10): 

You did great. Yes. So if you think about it, if you think about a company and they’re running their business and they have many different applications. They own some of their own infrastructure, they’re trying to reach cloud providers. They might have several providers that they’re working with for data analytics, for production. Their database might be sitting over here and they’re running different workloads over here, storage. They’ve got a very, very complicated complex hybrid infrastructure. And the idea is to bring their infrastructure as close to their cloud and their service providers as possible. So the idea is we are the location in the hub for where those native cloud on-ramps sit. So how quickly can you reach from your own, from your data, from your infrastructure into the cloud and back? And we provide that location to do so where it is the lowest latency, the least expensive option to interconnect that data and that workflow. And we do that in all of the different markets that we’re in. 

A Changing Charter for CoreSite: The Evolution to the Edge 

Scott Kinka (07:18): 

So let me, let me trace the history with you. You know, you said you’ve been there for more than a decade and then you just talked quite a bit about having data center assets close to applications. And I’m gonna guess a lot of these applications that we’re talking about probably weren’t quite so popular a decade ago, maybe <laugh>, right? Has the charter changed? 

Maile Kaiser (07:39): 

A year ago <laugh>. 

Scott Kinka (07:40): 

Right?! I mean, has the charter changed? What was that mission 10 years ago? Or how has it morphed over that timeframe? 

Maile Kaiser (07:48): 

That’s a great question, and actually it has evolved and I think we’re continuing to see an evolution of what we call edge computing. So 10 years ago, companies, and think about a traditional enterprise, would host their infrastructure either on-prem, in their own data center or in a colocation facility. And the things that they looked for as kind of the most important were no risk of natural disaster and low cost of power. And they would probably put that infrastructure somewhere, you know, far away from anything else. And they would connect it back to their office. So they had one carrier connection to their office, and that was really it. And now everyone is running in a distributed architecture, which means they don’t just have one data center, they probably have several for redundancy, but also to reach their customers or to their partners and to be able to get their applications as close to the end user as possible or as close to their customer as possible to support the performance of that application. 

(08:55): 

And so, it’s no longer about, let me go put my infrastructure, you know, in a kind of market where I can then connect everything back to my office. It’s now about, where are my customers. Where are my users? Or where’s my cloud provider? Where’s that edge compute sitting and put my infrastructure as close to that as possible. So we’re now seeing what we call this evolution to the edge, and we’re looking at customers that don’t want to just have one centralized location but to be able to connect out to many different locations needing to connect to different partners in different locations. I want to connect to a cloud region over here in a cloud region for backup on the other side of the country. How do I do that? And so CoreSite has always been kind of the center location for reaching networks. And then that evolved into reaching cloud providers and then evolving into reaching your CDN, your service provider, and anybody else that’s also in that ecosystem. And so that’s really the evolution. And I think we’re gonna eventually see CoreSite in more locations to be able to support that compute going further and further to where the customer or the user sits. 

Was it the Pandemic That Drove the Shift to Colocation? 

Scott Kinka (10:18): 

A few things popped out there, great description. I think everybody, I think most of the listeners of this pod will get kind of the growth of cloud, right? We get that. It was probably, you know, these were more traditional locations, data centers only largely one connection back to the headquarters. You know, clouds became part of the equation. So still probably one big connection back to the headquarters because they might be treating the colo like the security edge and then out to the cloud providers. Okay. I get that as the next stage. But you know what we hear all the time on the pod, and I’d be interested in your thinking on this one. I don’t care what the provider is, they might be one of the cloud providers you’ve talked about. We’ve had some of them on here. 

(11:03): 

You know, they may be infrastructure and network providers. They could be security providers. The one big conversation, because we do try to center a bit of our conversation about the pandemic, you know, how did it change our businesses? And I think we would normally wait a little bit to ask that question, but let me just throw it in here now. So often the conversations we have is that the network flipped. And what I mean by that is, you know, as an example, I’ll have a network provider on here and they’ll be like, we sold a ton of bandwidth in March and April of 2020 just to get people from, you know, the home into the office only to go back out to the cloud. That’s sort of that thing that you were talking about, about moving into the data center. So I mean the one entry point, the cloud piece obviously changed over time, but the location piece changed a little bit more recently in that equation. Is that a fair statement to make, you know, sort of the shiny buildings to the data center, data center to the cloud? Now it’s everybody to the data center, data center to the cloud. Is that, am I reading that right? And is that kind of recent? 

Maile Kaiser (12:10): 

I think there’s been a migration for enterprise companies to move off-prem and into a colocation over the last decade, but for different reasons. It was either, you know, when we had the financial crisis in 2009, a lot of companies said, why am I spending my capital on UPS maintenance when I should be saving it for my own core business? I don’t want to be in the business of operating a data center anymore. I’m moving to a colocation facility where this is their core competency. We saw a little bit of that 10 – 15 years ago. The pandemic, I think, did the same thing. It accelerated the: wait, why am I operating a data center when I really want my employees home <laugh> or focused on something else? And I think that a lot of companies realized; one, were they prepared to be able to operate their data center 24/7 during a pandemic? And if not, it was a catalyst for moving into a colocation facility. 

(13:17): 

And I think they realized data centers, we are essential, right? We have essential employees, they have to be there on-site 24/7. And our customers relied on that and said, oh my goodness, if I’m in a colocation facility, you can do some of this work for me. Rather than me having to send somebody to a data center, I can just take advantage. You’re already there. And so from a health perspective, it was safer from a, you’re already up and running 24/7, that was better. You know, that was important for them. And I think they realized, you know, we call it future-proofing. Are we ready for the next event? Are we ready to take advantage of whether it’s the cloud or another pandemic or anything? How do I best prepare my business to stay up and running always, and to be able to be ready for that next thing that’s coming? 

(14:15): 

And I think our customers realized, oh, you know, this is really important. This is, it is important for me to have my critical infrastructure in the right place. The third thing that happened was hybrid, right? Hybrid workloads and the latency when you, between your provider and your infrastructure, the better. Right? There are fewer hops, there’s better performance, and there’s less latency. And I think that became critical in terms of, wait, where is the central location for me to reach multiple cloud providers the best way I can? So I think those are kind of the three catalysts, if you will, as to why a company like CoreSite has been helpful to the customers and, and to IT professionals that are thinking through these issues and what do I do? Those are kind of some of the things that we’ve seen as reasons for them to look at the solution here that CoreSite provides. 

Scott Kinka (15:28): 

That’s interesting. Sort of pre-pandemic at the early phases of this, would you consider the colocation facility often the center of the customer’s network where the locations hung off? Or was that where the data lived and kind of the hub of the network, and the core of the network was still at their location? 

Maile Kaiser (15:47): 

I think the core of the network was, well, it’s always been, you know, important to put the network inside of the data center from a, you know, you have the uptime and the reliability. And how critical it is to keep your network up. But your network is everywhere, right? Your network is everywhere you’re trying to connect it to. I think what companies realized is just how critical that network is to their business and what is riding off that network is so critical and where the network extended beyond just the customer’s infrastructure, right? So it wasn’t just, I need access to the internet and I need access to my data. It was, wait a minute, I need access to the internet, my data, my cloud provider, my service provider, my security provider, my network provider. And all of a sudden the ecosystem of your little community that supports your business is much larger than it used to be. There are more connections sitting on that network than ever before. 

From Cloud First to Cloud Smart 

Scott Kinka (16:54): 

You’ve used the word hybrid a handful of times. I know I did as well. Take a step back and define that for a minute. As companies who are running workloads, you know, arguably in the public cloud and on cloud applications, and then also have services and solutions running on their own hardware potentially, or on bare metal in a data center like CoreSite’s. First off, are our definitions the same? 

Maile Kaiser (17:23): 

Yes. Okay. 

Scott Kinka (17:23): 

So do you feel like, I mean, we get into these cycles talking about tech and it was cloud, cloud, cloud, cloud, cloud, and you know, I’ve run into a lot of scenarios where customers just sort of picked up their entire workload that used to be in the on-prem data center, listened to the board and threw the whole thing into public cloud. And we’re talking and hybrid is the word of the day. Can you speak to that a little bit if you, if you guys found that there’s a reflection kind of back out of public to you and in what situations? Explain that a little bit. 

Maile Kaiser (18:02): 

Absolutely. So the repatriation, right? So they put it into… so I like to call it, everybody used to say cloud first. That was kind of the, we’ve gotta go cloud first. But then when they did, they realized not every application can work well in the cloud, or in that particular cloud. Also, there’s a lot of applications that are being born in the cloud, so the only way you can actually run them is through the public cloud. So I think what we found, and, and I did not coin this phrase, so yeah, I’m gonna borrow it. But I heard maybe six months ago cloud smart. So now it is, okay, I need cloud, absolutely everybody needs it, but I need to be smart about what I’m putting and where, and that, I think is how hybrid and multi-cloud architectures were born. 

(18:58): 

Companies realize I need to use Azure for, you know, my backup and DR or for Office 360, or I need Google for the analytics, and I’m doing machine learning and I’m using AWS with production. And I have all these different components to my business. Some are running on AWS, some are running on Oracle, and some are running on Google. And you know, I also have applications that I want to run myself because it might be cheaper, might be, you know, once I’m at a steady state, I actually have, the infrastructure I own myself is less expensive, but I still need to connect and talk to whatever I’m doing in the cloud. So all of a sudden you have this very I don’t wanna call it complicated, it is complicated, but it’s, a hybrid architecture of using many different types of cloud and then being able to manage all of that that’s how Core Site helps. 

(20:05): 

We help you with a managed solution where you can actually connect from cloud to cloud within our open cloud exchange. So you can actually have many different connections open to all the different cloud providers. And you can move workloads back and forth. Or you will have a physical connection right into their direct connect inside of our data center, where you might have a hundred gigs that you need to transfer back and forth, and you can do that right there inside the data center. And then you can also go from, you know, if you’re working with AWS on the west and you want the west region, and then you need a DR connection to the east, you just go right through the open cloud exchange to, to that. So the idea is you’re not going to just have all your infrastructure in one basket anymore, and you’re not gonna only have it in the public cloud anymore. You’re gonna have it wherever it makes sense. 

Scott Kinka (21:01): 

Let’s key on an open cloud exchange for a minute. Really interesting. We talked about it a little bit in the pre-call. You know, what am I looking at? And you know I’ve been a CTO, I’ve been a company founder, I’ve been in cloud, you know, am I looking at your UI in that to control the other cloud? Am I just looking at, like, if I go in, how do I see hybrid and open cloud exchange? What, what are you looking at? 

What is a Software-Defined Network? 

Maile Kaiser (21:27): 

What does it mean it’s a software-defined network? Ok. So we actually built a platform within our data center, and then we connected all of the data centers together in all of the different markets. And it’s another way to reach anyone in the community. So it extends within our campus. So if you’re in Santa Clara and we have nine data centers in Santa Clara, you can get to anybody in any of the data centers through our open cloud exchange, but you can also go inner market to Los Angeles or to Denver, or to Chicago, or to New York, or Virginia or Boston, Miami. And you can get to anyone anywhere else as well. So the idea is that you have a layer two, layer three, you can reach all the public cloud providers through there, and you can turn up, turn down service. It’s automated, it’s simple, and it’s a very easy connection. And it’s just a, it’s a way to reach anyone in your community that is in that, you know, that is also on the co-cloud exchange. 

Scott Kinka (22:35): 

So I should think of this as sort of, gone are the days of the, you know, physical cross-connect, right? We’re logically connected into the core, and then you say, I want to turn up X amount to Y provider in Z data center because they’re in the exchange already. 

Maile Kaiser (22:52): 

You know, it’s, it’s funny, we offer both, and there’s always a reason for a physical connection, right? Because if you’re doing, if you’re doing hundreds of gigs of, of connect, you know, connectivity you might need a physical cross-connect, but the physical cross-connect is gonna take you within the data center, right? Or we have what we call a campus cross-connect. If our two data centers are close together, you can do a campus cross-connect. But again, it’s gonna be a one-to-one physical connection. And we absolutely, you know, do that all day long for our customers. The open cloud exchange just takes that to that logical layer. It is a very quick automated turn-up, turn down, and move traffic from one provider to the next. You just, you have a lot of flexibility when you’re, let’s say you’re, you know, a new, a new game is coming out and you need to reach AWS for, you know, a month. You’re scaling, you’re bursting beyond what you ever thought you would do. Then you’re gonna maybe bring that VC down to a smaller bandwidth when you don’t when you get to a more steady state and then burst it back up when you need to again, or add another provider onto that port, and now you’ve got multiple providers, you can connect your data back and forth between those providers. Just a, it’s another very simple, easy tool to use to interconnect with anyone you’re reaching. 

What it Was Like Being a Company Leader at the Beginning of the Pandemic 

Scott Kinka (24:23): 

Makes perfect sense. Okay. Well, you know, with that in mind then, we’ve talked quite a bit about CoreSite as a company, right? The things that you sell, but you, you guys, yourselves are a business, right? Who went through many of the same things that our customers have. So just to knit this in with some of the other episodes that we have, I mean, you’re obviously on the executive team there at CoreSite. You were probably, I at least, I hope, given the question I’m about to pose in some of the conversations, take me back to being a company leader at the beginning of the pandemic. You know, it’s March, you know 12th to 14th, somewhere in there. I think it was, that week when we realized it was real. Tell us about that. When did you all have a meeting about it and what was discussed and what did you do in those first days? 

Maile Kaiser (25:15): 

Well, I remember the last board meeting we all sat in together was in Virginia and I think, March 3rd. And we did not go back to work as of March 9th. And that was the day the LA Unified School District decided to keep all the children home. And we decided that once the school systems decided to, you know, not go back to school, that was the day that we were not going back to work, basically, because, you know, you’ve got kids at home. So I think for us, that was what I recall. And there might have been other factors that went into the decision, but that was really kind of the big aha moment when schools were not going, you know, kids were not going back into class. We were not going back into the office. Except obviously, as I mentioned, all of our essential workers. So we stayed operational 24/7. What we did, there was no other employee who, outside of data center operations, was allowed to go into the data center. And that kept our data center operations team safe and healthy because no one was exposing them. And that was really critical. 

Scott Kinka (26:26): 

Did you have to go through the process of getting your company certified as an essential worker in some of the states you were in before you could send them in? Or was that always the case?  

Maile Kaiser (26:38): 

We never stopped sending them in. They were always in, yeah. We definitely were considered essential whatever process that is, but there was never a time when they weren’t in the data center 24/7. 

Scott Kinka (26:52): 

Got it. So tell me how it worked. I mean, obviously, you sent employees home, as did all of our customers, who probably experienced many of the same problems our customers did. So let’s commiserate with some of the listeners a little bit. Tell us what you did, you know, maybe some things that worked if you’re willing to, some things that didn’t? Would be great to hear and, and what you did about that later. 

Maile Kaiser (27:14): 

So, you know, I think for the sales team, it was still business as usual because sales was kind of 24/7 also. You know, I mean, not really, you know, I wouldn’t say that we’re working all night long. We’re not, but, but we were always available and we, you know, people worked from wherever. It didn’t really matter. They were still working. So I think sales were probably the easiest transition to remote because they were used to being on the road anyways, or being out of the office, I should say. Anyways I think the biggest question was how do you talk to customers if you can’t see them? And all of the events went away, every conference, trade show, you know even data center tours, which we rely on, no one’s coming into the data center to tour a data center during the pandemic. 

(28:08): 

So we created virtual tours. We went in and we, you know, I was one of the cameramen that went in and, and basically ran a tour of our data center so that we could put it up on video so that people could actually see virtually what our product was. We did a lot of webinars, you know, kind of live chats with customers. Obviously, we took advantage of all of the video conferencing as soon as we could and implemented that very quickly. We already had it, but we were, you know, as we, as everyone remembers, we used conference calls. We didn’t do video. And so, you know, that became the new thing too, to see each other on, on on the laptop versus in face, you know, face-to-face, I think. So for marketing, that was a struggle, right? It’s, oh my gosh, everything we do is on hold. We have to pivot and come up with something new. And so that, you know, the good news is we had a lot of relationships already built with customers. So those connections remained. To find new customers and getting them interested in CoreSite, we had to kind of come up with all new ways of reaching them. 

Scott Kinka (29:28): 

Again, about that. 

Maile Kaiser (29:29): 

And I think that you know, we were lucky that a lot of these ideas worked. We also saw that our customers, I think there was maybe, you know, two months of everybody froze and said, oh my gosh, what am I gonna do? Can I support remote working? Yeah. And then after about two months of every project going on hold, they all realized, oh my goodness, I need to accelerate what I was gonna do with data centers or colocation because I need to be better prepared. And so we saw, we, I would say our, you know, our, our sales team saw this halt, stop, freeze, go <laugh>. It was like a rocket ship after that.  

Scott Kinka (30:17): 

So, well, it was an impending event, right? I mean, best IT projects that don’t happen, just lack an impending event to get them started. And all of a sudden there it was, right? You mentioned a couple of interesting things in the middle of that that I kind of wanted to point out. One was on collaboration, we’ve heard of some of these other things. You said, we implemented the video conferencing, you know, of course, we had that, right? One of the things that one of our other guests said, not in your industry, said, we spent much of the time in the weeks after the pandemic teaching people how to use things they already had. Hmm. It feels a little bit. 

Maile Kaiser (30:55): 

Yes. Yes. I mean, you know, we, again, as we had, we’ve been using all of this technology, but just not in the way, in this new functionality that you could use it. Totally. Right? I mean, we used chat and we used you know, the, all of the conference calls, but I remember being on all of these same calls, but never did we actually see each other, see 

Scott Kinka (31:17): 

Each other, other 

Maile Kaiser (31:17): 

In the office. Right? Totally. So now all of a sudden, I’m looking at the, you know, the Brady Bunch squares constantly. Yeah. And we still, we still use it every single day. So interesting that that didn’t go away post-pandemic. 

Scott Kinka (31:32): 

Well, and one other thing that you mentioned there, that was echoed on another one of our shows, someone else, again, a different industry that was on the show had said that you know, we stopped calling people using phone calls mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, it was all about phone calls. And now we only have meetings like, so you have to have a half-hour meeting for a five-minute phone call. Do you, do you feel the same way? 

Maile Kaiser (31:55): 

Oh my goodness. I got to a point where my calendar was filled back to back to back to back and there was no time to get up and get out of your chair. So you’d spend 12 hours a day just sitting, because everybody’s now taking you to your point half an hour when they didn’t need a half hour. And I was trying to say, should we implement 15-minute meetings and 45-minute meetings, or, or 20. So just giving back a little bit of the hallway time that we missed. So, I think that was also a struggle today with going back to work, and we have, we’ve implemented, you know, kind of a twice a week go back to work and everybody goes to the office on Tuesday, and we do that because what a difference it makes. I was just in the office yesterday, the entire team was there. 

(32:48): 

We’re all talking about things that we wouldn’t necessarily be chatting about if, unless we had scheduled time to, but we’re, we’re just having so much of a strategic conversation that doesn’t always get to happen unless you schedule it on your video. Yeah. So what a difference. And it, we, we all laughed and said, doesn’t this feel like pre-covid? You know this is so great that we’re all here. But yeah, scheduling the time to drive into the office is now very difficult because, well, my meetings start at eight, when am I gonna get into the office? You know? Yeah. So when am I gonna go. 

Scott Kinka (33:25): 

Home? Do you expect the calendar if it’s open for you to be available? Right. Particularly. Exactly. Well, I mean, you answered what was gonna be my next question, which is what have you guys decided around hybrid work? So we get that, which means that we can get to the fund. So we’re right up against it. I’m gonna ask you a couple of fun questions. Sure. some you might be prepared for, and some you might not be. Okay, so here’s the first one. I need a shameless prediction. It doesn’t need to be about business, although it can be, it’s perfectly fine, but it could be something, you know, entertainment, macroeconomic, whatever it is, just prognosticate for all of us so we can have some fun if it happens about the next 12 to 18 months, give us something. 

Looking Forward to the Future With CoreSite American Tower 

Maile Kaiser (34:07): 

Oh my goodness. The next 12 to 18 months. You know, I don’t wanna sound boring and say business as usual. Yeah, I think we’re gonna see, I mean, I’m excited because with American Tower, I feel like finally CoreSite’s going to move into new markets and, and grow to the edge, which is the whole point of American Tower and CoreSite coming together. So whether it happens in the next 12 months…. Takes It’s a good prediction 

Maile Kaiser (34:37): 

<Laugh>. But I’m excited for where we’re going. I’m excited for the edge. You know, we talk about the Metaverse and we talk about autonomous vehicles, and we talk about all these things that are coming, AI and mixed reality. And I am super excited about just the opportunity for companies to do more with Edge and more with 5G and more with, you know, the, the new applications that haven’t even been created yet. So I get excited every year just because in our business, technology is being created every day. And so I’m excited for CoreSite American Tower because we actually are situated to be right there to support when this incredible, you know, new world comes and needs to sit out at the edge. We’ll be there to support it. So I’m excited about that. But is that 12 months? It could be three years. Who knows? 

Scott Kinka (35:38): 

Oh, hey, listen, we’re there. We get it. Okay here, so here’s the next question. We’ll tie them together then. So you’re talking about all these new apps that, by the way, have to live in a data center somewhere, which I know is why you’re excited, but if we’re talking about all those new apps, so let’s just assume the next pandemic happens, you can decide whatever that is. Some people have said it’s an asteroid or zombie apocalypse or something. I’m not asking you what that is, I’m just saying it occurs and only one application is still working on your mobile device. 

Maile Kaiser (36:07): 

Is it the one I use the most that you 

Scott Kinka (36:09): 

Wanna, well, it’s whatever one you are deciding in the condition of your, you know, dystopian future that you are absolutely gonna need to have going forward. 

Maile Kaiser (36:19): 

Oh, goodness. Well, the one I use the most is Instagram. But I mean, I kind of feel like I’m a little outdated because my use, my kids use Snap and I’m sure there’s something new. And then TikTok, right? I haven’t gotten on TikTok yet, so I have some work to do to kind of get up with the times, but for me, it’s the connection with people and my friends and my family that I don’t ever wanna lose. So whatever app that looks like down the road, or the one I use today, or a combination of them, that is critical for me. 

Scott Kinka (36:57): 

Super fair answer. And of course, I mean, look, it’ll, if it is a zombie apocalypse, it’ll be really entertaining to see what ends up on your feed and Instagram or what have you. So no, I like that. That’s a good one. Okay, so last one, here’s the challenging one. I’m gonna ask you to pick your favorite supporting role. And  we do this because everybody on the show’s a leader. They wouldn’t be a leader if they also weren’t good at supporting, but you have to pick a supporting role. So you can pick, I’ll give you some examples of things you can pick from. Sure. and, but you can always go off script a little bit. We say to people, Hey, you can be the bass player in your favorite band, or you can be the supporting actor in your favorite movie, or the, you know, gadget off the bench player on your favorite sports team, or the, you know, co-author of your favorite book, whatever that is. But if you had to pick a supporting role you wanted to be what would it be? 

Maile Kaiser (37:57): 

Oh, goodness. That’s a hard question. It is, 

Scott Kinka (37:59): 

Right? 

Maile Kaiser (38:01): 

Well, my favorite supporting role that I already play is Mother. So I don’t know if I get to use that one. 

Scott Kinka (38:06): 

You, it’s the best answer I’ve heard all season. So please hit that one. That’s, yeah. 

Maile Kaiser (38:11): 

You know, I mean, because that’s my job. I’m the supporting role in three humans’ lives, and I’m trying to help them be the best leader they can be. And so, you know, I think, I mean, I guess I’m cheating because I already have that role. But that is my favorite role. I think you know, I thought you were going to say, who’s your favorite you’d ever want to be? And I might say Steph Curry because I think he’s incredible, but he’s not a supporting role.  

Scott Kinka (38:45): 

<Laugh>. But you know what, that’s okay. I mean, here’s the thing. 

Maile Kaiser (38:48): 

Putting around him that supports him, I’m envious of. 

Scott Kinka (38:51): 

Look, I mean, I look at that, though. Yes, he’s not a supporting role, at least because in his production, but the position is generally considered a supporting role, right? I mean, I guess that’s how you lead, which gets back to your first answer, which is, was beautiful. Thank you for sharing that. Like, listen, I get it. Leaders lead by support at the end of the day, servant leadership, right? So words of wisdom that we can take as a nugget, at the end of this, are really good. Our, my, our producers over here scratching something down on paper. Yeah. so he’ll, I’m sure we’ll do something with that. 

Maile Kaiser (39:22): 

Yeah. 

Scott Kinka (39:23): 

So thank you by the way. This was a great conversation. Thank you. We appreciate the time. If a listener of ours aside, obviously from reaching out to their friendly neighborhood, Bridgepointe Strategist wants to learn more about CoreSite, how would they do that? 

Maile Kaiser (39:39): 

Well, the easiest thing to do is to go to our website, coresite.com. We have a new video coming online that you can click on that talks all about the OCX and also the native cloud on reps I mentioned. And it’s a great analogy, to flying and your non-stop flight versus your, you know, kind of multi-stop flight and how you get the data from one place to another. It’s fantastic. So check that out. But that’s the easiest way to reach us and learn more about who we are and what we do. And would, you know, anyone that wants to have a conversation with me would love to have it. So thank you so much for including me here. 

Scott Kinka (40:21): 

I’m really thrilled we got an opportunity to do this. You know, this show, as our listeners know, is sponsored by Bridgepointe Technologies, which is a partner of CoreSite. And, you know, we’re happy to be engaged and can plug in to assist in any of your needs in that regard as well. But really happy to have had you, Maile. I appreciate that. Thank you so much for your time. And thank all of you out there in the interwebs for listening to this episode of The Bridge. 

Maile Kaiser (40:48): 

Thank you Bridgepointe for being a great partner.