Member Monday – ViaWest

By Tiffany Bryan, Director of Development

Tiffany recently chatted with John Greenwood, Regional Vice President and General Manager for ViaWest, one of the largest privately held data center companies in North America. He leads their Texas Region, which includes 8 data centers, including their flagship site in Richardson, which was launched in June of 2011. John has been in the data center industry for the better part of 10 years having held previous management positions with both CyrusOne and AT&T. John’s background is primarily in sales and marketing, but he’s also had the opportunity to work in both finance and operations over his technology career. John is a graduate of Marquette University in Milwaukee, WI. He also has a MBA from the University of Dallas and a MS in Telecommunications from SMU.

My favorite part of Dallas is?
From an economic standpoint, Dallas has positioned itself for long-term success, thanks to a pro-business environment, attracting companies of all sizes from start-up to Fortune 500.

Please tell us a little about ViaWest.  What type of clients do you look for?
ViaWest is one of the largest privately held data center companies in North America. We offer data center colocation, managed services and cloud computing solutions to companies of all sizes. With a high touch service and support model and world-class data centers, our customers rely on us to support their mission critical IT infrastructure.

You are currently the largest data center into the North Dallas area.  What makes this center different than others?
While there are differences from a data center engineering standpoint, our decentralized business model is our secret sauce. Our model allows us to respond more quickly to our customers and make decisions that are best for them. This requires having expertise and support at the local level thereby creating an environment of ultimate accountability.

What is one piece of advice you received as a business leader that you gladly pass along to others?
Keep things simple, operate with a sense of urgency, and take care of the customer!

What do you consider your biggest accomplishment as a company to be?
The greatest accomplishment has to be the culture we’ve built as a company. It’s why we’ve been so successful in supporting existing customers and attracting so many new ones.  It’s also why we’ve attracted some of the top talent in the industry from a data center infrastructure standpoint, which not only includes the design and management of the data center itself, but also includes experts in virtualization, security, storage, network and servers, as an example. The capabilities, credentials and experience of our employees throughout all levels of the organization enables the trust we receive from our customers to support their mission critical IT infrastructure.