Data may be a bunch of ones and zeros, but it still has to live somewhere. That somewhere is usually a data center, a facility built to house servers, storage racks and the other necessary props of a data-driven company. These facilities are not friendly places, and the services they provide customers often extend no further than space to set up some hardware. That’s changing.

To shed some light on this new world of data center services, Dave Vellante (@dvellante) and Jeff Frick (@JeffFrick), cohosts of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, joined Dave Dzienciol, group executive of Customer and Technology at NEXTDC, Ltd., during the ServiceNow Knowledge16 conference.

The co-lo advantage

The conversation started with Dzienciol describing what NEXTDC does. He said it was the largest independent data center operator, running under the slogan, “We are where the Cloud lives.” He mentioned that the company is very partner-centric, selling its service through those partners.

As to why companies would use NEXTDC’s service, he pointed out the capital outlay for a data center can be limiting for customers. For many businesses, it’s better to take advantage of someone else’s infrastructure. The value is in giving customers a service in the power and scale of the facility.

The experience is everything

“Going to a data center is like going to a prison,” Dzienciol said. “It’s very secure, very serious. We want to make it more like going to a day spa. Security and access is where it starts, but we can make the experience of coming in brilliant.”

Access is critical to operations, but also to NEXTDC’s brand, he added. “We looked at access and figured how we could take humans out of the process. A service-management framework enables that capability very easily for us. Ensuring we have the right security posture is very important to us.”

Watch the full video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of ServiceNow Knowledge16.

Photo by SiliconANGLE