Latisys IT infrastructure solutions

Pete Stevenson, Latisys CEO, stopped by to introduce himself and his company. What started out as just a briefing turned into a very informative, discussion of how managed services and hosting companies are evolving into cloud services providers. Latisys speaks about itself as "a rapidly emerging IT infrastructure solutions provider."

Latisys is a rapidly growing provider with data centers in four major markets. It currently has more than 500,000 sq ft of data center space. Latisys is in the process of announcing an additional 70,000+ square feet of space. The company's flagship data center is located in Ashburn, VA.

The conversation covered quite a bit of territory. I'll try to summarize what was a very interesting time in a few bullets:

• Managed services suppliers are evolving from merely offering data center space and basic IT operations and physical security services to offering a number of services to allow companies to effectively outsource much of their facilities and workload operations.
• Some suppliers seem to be in a race to the bottom and are offering low cost services combined with little or no IT expertise. While these services might be useful to companies having their own IT expertise, it really doesn't provide a strong foundation for outsourcing.
• The future leaders in this space are going to become IT partners with their customers and provide a number of added services beyond merely managing the facility, the power, the cooling and low level system operations. This might mean offering management of collaborative systems, website operations or even extend into application development and support.
• The key message Latisys offers is that its business is no longer focused merely on technology. Latisys has gone beyond technology to seeking ways to help its customers address their business requirements as well as their need for agility, reliability and compliance.

I really enjoyed the conversation and look forward to speaking with Latisys again.