We got a few minutes with CyrusOne’s founder, President & CEO David Ferdman, to learn just how a small startup has made such a big success in these tough economic times:
David, what do you see as the first and foremost reason CyrusOne has been able to not only survive, but thrive, when so many others in this industry are failing?
Despite the down market, CyrusOne has seen continuous growth because we continue to maintain a strict focus on what matters in business and to us: our customers and their needs. We understand that customer access to critical applications is imperative. We don’t just provide companies with a superior facility to house their critical business applications; we focus on providing them with solutions that enhance the performance and efficiency of those applications. To do that, you have to spend time talking with customers to help identify their problems and understand what their issues are. We believe we do that better than anyone. We listen, learn and create ideas and solutions to meet the needs of our clients for reliability, availability, accessibility and power.
So far, that sounds like something that most of your competition might try to claim, too. How do you differentiate yourself?
In this tough economy, we have also seen consolidations and exits from companies with similar services, so it has been important to differentiate our offering from our remaining competitors. There is a handful that we could identify, but the most significant continue to be our people, our facility, the level of customization available and our reliability.
Let’s take those one at a time. Tell us about your people.
Many of our prospects and customers consistently communicate that CyrusOne is more flexible, creative, and responsive than their previous provider. From the top down, we are customer focused and our customers recognize this. The professionalism and experience of our team has also resulted in numerous invitations by IT leadership associations, professional firms, and government organizations to present to the IT community on topics surrounding security, disaster recovery and business continuity, availability, etc. While the importance of people and experience is perhaps difficult to quantify, it is easily one of the most valuable differentiators to our clients because we are an extension of their business for their critical applications.
How do you find such top-notch people to work for your company? What do you differently in your recruiting, hiring, and training?
CyrusOne is able to identify and secure top-notch people to work for our company as a result of our patience. Our customers rely and trust in our expertise to safeguard their data and critical business applications. We take that trust seriously and have a specific and disciplined process in place that involves several layers before we extend an offer to join our team.
As a member of our technical team, our engineers are encouraged and even required to cross-train on various applications and to pursue ongoing education at all times. Our technical staff pays close attention to the applications and systems used by our customers to determine if there is a need for additional certifications and continued education.