fifteenfortyseven Critical Systems Realty’s Managing Partner and Co-Founder, Corey Welp participated in the panel “Sustaining Investment Demand for Digital Infrastructure in a Post-Covid World” with fellow industry thought leaders at International Telecoms Week (ITW). Corey was instrumental in bringing together the 1547 team and has proven experience in the data center space. The panel covered topics including the changing perception of ICT infrastructure, attracting new investors with longer-term funds and cheaper capital, the driving factors of this year’s largest investments and M&A deals, post-Covid digital infrastructure investment, and emerging use cases in the Metaverse.
Over the last two years, the value of the digital infrastructure asset class has become clear. The asset class is seen as critical infrastructure and a utility underpinning much of the global economy. In the panel, Welp spoke about the shifting trends in different sectors, prior, during, and post COVID. From the data center angle, Welp described how 1547 has recently seen an acceleration of cloud application through its leasing perspective.
Prior to the pandemic, enterprise leasing and cloud adoption rates were breaking records. During COVID, Welp and 1547 observed that enterprise leasing numbers didn’t keep pace, begging the question of whether enterprises would begin to move away from data centers and primarily into the cloud. However, to this point in the post pandemic era, Welp has observed a return to enterprise leasing. He mentioned how the acceleration of bandwidth during COVID “highlighted cracks in the infrastructure,” and that shedding light on these cracks will continue to drive market numbers and activity.
Thought leaders on the panel included:
- Corey Welp, Managing Partner and Co-Founder, Fifteenfortyseven Critical Systems Realty
- Stephen Nettler, Managing Director, ING Capital LLC
- Kemal Hawa, Partner and Shareholder, Greenberg Traurig, LLP
- Joshua Pang, Managing Director and Head of Digital Infrastructure, Carlyle Global Infrastructure
- Warren Roll, Managing Director, DigitalBridge
To learn more about fifteenfortyseven Critical Systems Realty and its Orangeburg facility, please visit, https://1547realty.com/.