March 09
Jimmy Nipper cut his teeth in the data center industry in 2003, when he was hired as a technician at Evoque’s Lithia Springs data center. It was there, building PCs and programming in Basic, that his passion for figuring out how technical things work turned into a career. Over the last 20 years he has delivered excellent service to our customers, and alongside his team of data center professionals, he has kept our Atlanta Data Center humming with 100% uptime in that period.
What drew you to the world of technology and data centers?
Even in my youth, I was a tinkerer by nature, always trying to figure out how things work. As a student, I gravitated towards technology. As I made my way to a career, I was determined to work with technology, because even as a tech, I saw the power it had to turn ideas into reality. Becoming the data center manager of Lithia Springs was the realization of a lifelong dream. Nowadays, I love when I get the opportunity to share the knowledge I’ve acquired over the years with the younger generations of technicians as they grow in their career.
How do you support customers in our Atlanta Data Center?
Whether it’s developing a straight-line redundant service to provide gaming and entertainment and media companies the fastest throughput from the data center out to the rest of the world, or supporting a company’s migration from single use servers to chassis to blade servers, back to multiple use servers, to VLAN and VM servers, my primary mission is to set up our customers for success.
Setting customers up for success in the data center means getting to know them, their business goals, and familiarizing them with the equipment that supports their environment. Before their solution is even fully architected, my goal is to make sure the customer is aware of all the technology supporting their environment. Evoque customers in Atlanta know that our data center team is going to bend over backwards and make sure that we are doing everything we can in the data center to help them meet their goals.
How do you keep a finger on the pulse of what customers are needing?
I encourage my technicians to regularly talk to customers, all customers, to become friends with them. That way, customers feel comfortable reaching out to us, knowing we’re capable and willing to help problem solve and design a solution alongside them.
Any closing insights that explain your facility is the best place to colocate a data center in Atlanta?
In the end trust is everything. Do what you say you are going to do. There’s no shortcut to establishing trust.
Evoque’s Atlanta data center is located in Lithia Springs just 15 miles from downtown Atlanta, and 19 miles from the Atlanta Airport. The entire 137,203 square foot facility has over 10 MW of power and is built to a 2N configuration. There is currently 13,000 square feet and more than 2 MW of power available. With Altaworx, Bandwidth IG, Cloudflare, Cogent, Comcast, ExteNet, Kyndryl, Lumen, Megaport, Sierra
