{"id":33512,"date":"2019-09-06T08:15:45","date_gmt":"2019-09-06T07:15:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/?p=33512"},"modified":"2019-09-10T11:15:01","modified_gmt":"2019-09-10T10:15:01","slug":"deep-dive-marc-garner-vp-secure-power-division-schneider-electric-uk-and-ireland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/2019\/09\/06\/deep-dive-marc-garner-vp-secure-power-division-schneider-electric-uk-and-ireland\/","title":{"rendered":"Deep Dive: Marc Garner, VP, Schneider Electric UK and Ireland"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

We ‘Deep Dive’ with Marc Garner, VP, Secure Power Division, Schneider Electric UK and Ireland<\/strong>, who tells us about life inside and outside the office.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What would you describe as your\nmost memorable achievement in the data centre industry?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There have been too many to mention, new customer\nsuccesses always leave you with a great feeling. Getting to know our partners,\nlearning more about the challenges their customers face and finding new ways to\nsupport them has also been very rewarding. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What first made you think of a\ncareer in technology\/data centres?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a sense, the technology industry found me. I wanted\nto join a leading technology company where I could have a career and develop,\nso I joined Schneider Electric, rather than the data centre industry itself. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At Schneider, I progressed through some of the other\nbusiness units before I came into the Secure Power Division, which works\ndirectly with the data centre sector. It was the opportunities that the company\nprovided to me, to take on bigger and more complex roles, that brought me to\nwhere I am today. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What style of management philosophy\ndo you employ with your current position?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve always been focused around the people in the\nbusiness. I firmly believe that if we invest in our people and their\ndevelopment, we will see significant returns in terms of customer satisfaction\nand experience, which will deliver success to the overall business. Ultimately\nour business is led by people, so it\u2019s important to have a motivated and happy group\nof professionals working together collaboratively, as a team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What do you think is the current\nhot talking point within the data centre space?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Edge Computing is certainly one of the main talking points within the industry today. Many of our customers are concerned with reducing latency, network resilience, power availability and with managing distributed IT environments. That naturally leads to an interest in deploying data centres at the Edge of the network, where data is created, processed and consumed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are various challenges associated with the distributed environment and at Schneider we believe there are three key enablers for Edge. They include; remote management with simplified monitoring, 24\/7 visibility and predictive analytics; greater physical security to prevent unauthorised access to IT equipment; and rapid deployment to ensure a standardised, repeatable and quick to deploy approach. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another important talking point is about people and skillsets. There is great concern throughout the industry that there are not enough skilled people to deliver projects in a timely and reliable fashion. Something very important to me is how we bring new skills into the industry and how we develop our people to serve our customers both now and in the future. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

How do you deal with stress and\nunwind outside the office?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Golf and family. There\u2019s nothing like having a three-year\nold to distract you from the office, but on the rare occasions that I can tear\nmyself away from both, I enjoy a round of golf. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What do you currently identify as\nthe major areas of investment in your industry?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

For me, this comes back to the issue around skills\nshortages within the industry. We need a variety of skilled people to keep up\nwith the demands of today\u2019s customers and ensure we can deliver outstanding\nservice throughout the data centre lifecycle. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As an industry, this will include project managers,\nengineers, salespeople, marketers and technical specialists. It\u2019s vital that we\ninvest in these people and their skills because demand is growing and we need\nto ensure that projects are delivered to meet customers\u2019 expectations. Right\nnow we are very focused on recruiting people with the right skills into our\nbusiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What\nare the region-specific challenges you encounter in your role? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Depending where you are, power and\/or connectivity can\nbe major issues. Some regions have an abundance of one and a none of the other.\nI know of some places where one can access 200MW of power with little\ndifficulty, but there is little to no fibre connectivity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conversely, in some high-density population areas\nthere is ample connectivity, but it can be challenging to construct a new\npower-generation facility. That\u2019s an important trade-off to manage. The\navailability of green energy is also an issue in some regions. Customers are\nbecoming increasingly concerned about the environment, sustainability and\nreducing their carbon footprint, so demand for renewable or green energy is\ngrowing within the industry. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What changes to your job role have\nyou seen in the last year and how do you see these developing in the next 12\nmonths?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the last year the biggest change to my job role has been the learning curve that comes with joining the data centre sector. There have been many changes within the industry, especially those surrounding the creation and use of data. In some cases, we\u2019ve seen new technologies become more popular, like Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML). In others, the re-emergence of those once considered out-dated, like liquid cooling. 

For our customers, the challenges across many verticals will remain the same during the next 12 months. Power availability is key, ensuring resilience of distributed IT is another, latency and physical security will also continue to be important, especially with the advocacy of technologies like 5G. 

How we service our customers may differ from use case to use case, but I believe that presents us with an opportunity to overcome new challenges and demonstrate significant value to them. My role will continue to ensure we bring the right skills in to service their needs. 

As the technological demands change, we may also shift our focus away from spaces that have seen large areas of industry discussion, such as colocation, cloud and hyperscale, towards smaller and more intimate customers. It\u2019s often in the space below the biggest names that one finds key opportunities for growth.

As businesses continue to embrace hybrid computing environments, those areas will of course continue to grow and cannot be neglected, but over the next 12 months my team will also continue to focus on identifying new ways to add value to our customers in many new spaces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What advice would you offer\nsomebody aspiring to obtain a senior position in the industry?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The technology industry is a people industry, so network\nas much as possible. It\u2019s important to get a deep understanding of any industry\nand find out how it works. I\u2019d also recommend that anyone new coming into it find\nthe right organisation to support their ambition, their development and their career\nprogression. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We ‘Deep Dive’ with Marc Garner, VP, Secure Power Division, Schneider Electric UK and Ireland, who tells us about life inside and outside the office. What would you describe as your most memorable achievement in the data centre industry? There have been too many to mention, new customer successes always leave you with a great […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":33640,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[55,6652,14],"tags":[11322,12460,11339,13357,12461,12156],"class_list":["post-33512","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-data-centres","category-get-to-know","category-more-news","tag-get-to-know","tag-marc-garner","tag-power","tag-schneider-electric-uk-and-ireland","tag-secure-power-division","tag-vp"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33512","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33512"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33512\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33631,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33512\/revisions\/33631"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}