C O M P A N Y I N S I G H T
EMPOWERING THE CLOUD
In Partnership With:
A DIRECT LINE TO DATA CENTERS
Written by Dale Benton Produced by Tom Venturo
Direct Line is a market leader in data center design, construction and management. With ambitions of expanding its global footprint, the real value is in its people
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or over a decade, Direct Line has been a market leader in providing systems integration services, including the design / build and material planning of data centers, and most recently managed services (i.e. break/fix, directline.us
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DIRECT LINE
John Friesen
President and CEO
installation, decommission, inventory management and troubleshooting). The company has worked with some of the biggest data centric clients in the world, including Facebook, Yahoo and LinkedIn, but for John Friesen, President and CEO at Direct Line, the most valuable asset at the company’s disposal are its people and a culture instilled from top to bottom that the customer comes above anything else. “Customer service is my first
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priority, profitability second,” he says. Friesen comes from a background of working in customer service and customer facing roles. It is this experience that he feels allows him and the Executive Vice President of the company, Ignacio Del Rio, to be the market leaders in the data center design and construction space. “Our team recognizes that if you aren’t out there trying to provide solutions and you’re just doing the minimal of what’s expected, then you’re creating problems. Go above and beyond and you become part of the solution,” he says. Friesen remains fully active within the company’s day to day operations, often heading out into the field with project managers and customers. While recognising that he himself is not a mission critical element, Friesen does so to show both his people and the customer how much he values the role they play. “The more active I am, the more people can see how much I care about this,” he says. “Our guys have to care about what they do, like what they do
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“Customer service
is my first priority” – John Friesen, Presient and CEO
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DIRECT LINE
“The company has worked with some of the
biggest data centric clients in the world” – John Friesen, Presient and CEO
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and care about the customer. Without that, the company fails.” This notion of strong customer service and going above and beyond what is expected is a vision shared by Del Rio, who sees employees adapting to something he candidly calls the “Direct Line way”. This way of working is a simple philosophy, ensuring that Direct Line is giving the customers what they want and not what the business thinks the customers need. Direct Line possesses a mentality that accepts responsibility and takes complete ownership of its services to the end user, for better or for worse. “As a company, there is no “it’s not us” mentality. It’s about taking ownership of the good and the bad. How can we first and foremost determine a problem and ultimately solve that problem if we possess that distancing mentality from the outset?” explains Del Rio. Growing and growing Since its inception in 1997 as a data solutions provider in the Bay Area, Direct Line has experienced significant
Ignacio del Rio
Co Owner at Direct Line
growth which has coincided with a technological boom in the data center space. With a focus on quality, construction management, supply chain management and this growing industry has seen Direct Line capitalise on a need for more efficient data cabling infrastructures. By understanding the complexities that come with this environment, Direct Line has hired and trained its 200+ employees to specialise in mission critical data center projects.
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“We are witnessing something of extraordinary growth in terms of companies struggling to find enough data center space to meet their bandwidth requirements,” says Del Rio. This level of complexity surrounding data center construction and management is simplified somewhat as “building the internet”, according to Mike Janes, VP of Business Development and Data Center Design. The data center industry is one of
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the fastest growing industries in the world and around five years ago, Friesen recognised that the company needed to expand beyond its current nationwide and international footprint. Direct Line has offices in Fremont, California, Ashburn, Virginia, as well as an international office in Singapore. “We’re already a nationwide company, with a company in Singapore and a subsidiary in Ireland as there is plenty of market share out there,” says Friesen.
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“Sure, we have Silicon Valley, one of the most dynamic places in the country, but I realised that in order to fully grow and achieve what we want to achieve we needed to develop a nationwide footprint which in turn has now become an international footprint.� He says. The challenge in people Direct Line has grown from its somewhat humble beginnings. Del Rio and Freisen became partners in the business in 2007 at a point where the company had only three employees
out in the field. Fast forward to today and Direct Line has close to 250 field technicians, engineers and project managers working across a wide number of clients, each with that customer centric mentality that both Friesen and Del Rio instil. But as much as Del Rio, Friesen and Janes see the people as the key to the success to the business. All recognise the challenge that the company faces in accessing labor and trained labor. The data center industry is a huge industry, but one that is still growing and at a pace
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Your Power Needs. Your Way. For more than 25 years, Starline Track Busway has been revolutionizing electrical power distribution for the data center industry. Its simplicity and flexibility provide data center managers with fast and economical solutions for supplying power and expanding operations quickly. Starline Track Busway can be tapped instantly at any location, without any downtime. To learn why we are the power distribution and monitoring system of choice for data centers, visit www.starlinepower.com.
8Siemon
[ Inspired by our Past, focused on the Future ]
8 Quality, Service, Innovation and Value Since 1903 Siemon established in 1903, Siemon is an industry leader specializing in the design and manufacture of high quality, high performance low voltage infrastructure solutions and services for Data Centers, LANs and Intelligent Buildings. Headquartered in Connecticut, USA, with global sales, technical and logistics expertise spanning 100 countries, Siemon offers the most comprehensive suite of copper and optical fiber cabling systems, cabinets, racks, cable management, data center power and cooling systems and Intelligent Infrastructure Management solutions. With more than 400 patents specific to structured cabling, Siemon Labs invests heavily in R&D and the development of Industry Standards, underlining the company’s long-standing commitment to its customers and the industry. To learn more about Siemon visit www.siemon.com/company W W W
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that makes finding the right people believes is fundamental to being who are trained to the best possible successful in the data center industry. standard more and more difficult. “You need to be an expert This challenge extends to in fiber in order to build data the technology and processes centers in 2017,” he says. required to design build and To mitigate the challenge of finding manage a data center. quality personnel and staying on “Everything we did three years ago top of this fluid industry, Direct Line is now obsolete,” says Janes. “The currently has two training facilities, challenge is trying to remain current in the East Coast and West Coast with the skillset required, areas. Not only do these the changing technology facilities better equip processes and staying employees with the abreast of what the knowledge necessary to industry is doing.” deliver the best possible This technology boom service, but to also better - John Friesen, is largely driven by the foster the relationships President and CEO speed of data servers, with manufacturers. with companies trying “The manufacturers to push more and more bandwidth offer training, in which they will bring in through those servers which requires professionals to train our employees new equipment and new processes. on the latest technology and products that will enable the business to Down to every fiber be more efficient,” says Janes. One particular trend across the Direct Line prides itself on data center industry has been the establishing deep relationships move to fiber. Direct Line is at a key with these manufacturers in order advantage point in that the company to better serve the end user. The has experts in fiber and the utilisation way the company achieves this is by of the technology, something Janes answering one simple question.
“We’re already a nationwide company”
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DIRECT LINE
Mike Janes
VP, Data Center Design
“It’s about understanding what manufacturers are looking at, what they are looking for in a working relationship, and how is that influencing the direction of the industry,” says Del Rio. This need to better understand the industry does not start and end with the field operators and technicians; Del Rio and Friesen and the toplevel management all make great strides in staying ‘in the know’. “We need to understand the
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footprints of all the equipment in the industry because if you don’t, through seminars and conferences, you immediately lose step of what the key influences and influencers on the industry are,” says Del Rio. Both Friesen and Del Rio are extremely proud of the customer service and the attention to detail and professionalism that the company provides, but in order to retain the high-level clients and attract new customers to the business they cannot rest on their laurels. “We are incredibly fortunate to work with the customers that we have, and every single day we earn that right. We work for it, and we earn it,” says Friesen. Fostering partnerships For Direct Line, the key partners are the data center companies and the manufacturers that the company has worked with and established over the years. Key partnerships that the company fosters and partners who are willing to “drop ship” for Direct Line. “Working together with the shared expertise allows us to meet deadlines
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and provide more custom solutions for end users,” says Janes. “If those three elements [Direct Line, manufacturers and data center companies] can go to an end user, tell them we can work on this collaboratively and meet their specific requirements, we will succeed,” Strong, successful partnerships are not established overnight. Nor are they formed through happenstance. To the future The goal of Direct Line is to be recognised as a market leader and
the level of service it delivers to be second to none. Friesen believes that Direct Line is already there, almost. “Often people will ask me who is our competition,” says Friesen. “I don’t want to be so arrogant as to say that no one does what we do, but what I can say through conversations with clients and customers is that there is no one out there that does it to the incredible quality that we do.” If that is the case, then where can Direct Line go from here? Friesen recognises that there is always a better way of doing something.
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DIRECT LINE
“Being proven in the industry IS OUR GOAL. Clients can be assured THAT WE KNOW data centers and have SIGNIFICANT EXPERIENCE from the bottom up.” – Ignacio del Rio, Co Owner at Direct Line
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Direct Line has already experienced tremendous growth and success, but Friesen believes in asking “how can we do it better?” One aspiration is for the company to establish a stronger international footprint outside of its operations currently in the US. This is a vision shared by both Friesen and Del Rio and the two agree that in order to get there the company must continue to deliver the customer centric service that has already been recognised from global clients, including the social networking giant Facebook. “A company like Facebook doesn’t want just anybody touching its data centers, with the complexities involved that could result in significant downtime,” says Del Rio.
“Being proven in the industry is our goal. Clients can be assured that we know data centers and have significant experience from the bottom up.” For Friesen, though, this can only be achieved by retaining that culture of going above and beyond for the customer to generate true value. “If everybody across the company cares and shows that to the customer, then that creates an incredible culture,” he says. “If you don’t have somebody who appreciates the value that you can bring, then you’re nothing but a commodity.”
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4038 Clipper Court Fremont, CA, USA, 94107 Tel. 510-413-9055 Fax. 510-413-9056 directline.us