Interview with Digital Fortress’ Channel Chief, Steve Verp
In the lead up to the Channel Partners Conference & Expo, taking place on November 1-4 in Las Vegas, Nevada, Steve Verp discussed Digital Fortress’ future and goals of attending the conference.
Steve Verp is the Channel Chief of Digital Fortress, an owner and operator of colocation and wholesale data centers with ten multi-tenant facilities and a wholesale data center across the United States. Steve is an experienced channel sales leader with over twenty years of experience building, managing, mentoring, and motivating channel sales teams. Steve has helped lead the Digital Fortress team in a successful 2021 full of acquisitions and new partnerships nationwide.
Question: What does Digital Fortress do and what problems are you attempting to solve?
Steve Verp (SV) Response: Digital Fortress is an owner and operator of colocation and wholesale data centers with 10 multi-tenant facilities and a wholesale data center across the US. We offer multi-tenant data center, network, and cloud access services to large and midsize enterprises in key markets including the Portland, OR, Seattle, WA, Denver, CO, Piscataway, NJ, Chicago, IL, and Richmond, VA markets. Through an array of global partnerships we have the ability to support clients in Europe, including Ireland and the UK. In our first foray into owning and operating a wholesale data center, we are very proud of our Richmond, VA facility, centrally located and equi-distant from subsea cable landing points in Virginia Beach and the Northern Virginia data center alley. Our flexibility is a key differentiator. With a hands-on executive team with decades of IT, network and data center experience, our solutions are adaptable and scalable, key requirements in today’s digital era.
Question: What do you attribute to Digital Fortress’ success?
SV Response: We take pride in our executive team that has proven experience building data center and network businesses. We work with an array of strategic partnerships including Avison Young, CBRE, DataPlex Group, Expedient, Isa, Megaport, Ntirety, SinglePoint Global, Sky Data Vault, Telarus, and Viatel. Through these new partnerships, Digital Fortress has the capability to expand its services across North America and Europe, while enabling customers to access additional communications solutions including disaster recovery, cloud connectivity, colocation management and cloud services. Our mission is to provide our customers a one-stop shop solution for all of their digital infrastructure needs worldwide.
Question: What milestones did Digital Fortress achieve in the past year and how will these developments help Digital Fortress keep up with the demands of the quickly growing and ever-changing telecommunications industry?
SV Response: Digital Fortress started the year 2021 introducing our new Chief Executive Officer, Juan Saca, Chief Sales Officer, Jhoan Checo and myself as Channel Chief. In March 2021, we acquired 9 interconnected facilities in Chicago, Denver, New Jersey, Portland and Seattle with an additional acquisition of the company’s now flagship wholesale data center in Richmond, Virginia. Our Richmond facility offers immediate availability with space, power and connectivity needed for future expansion and offers land for a new digital data center. Through our acquisitions, we have provided our customers with ample space to scale their businesses with the necessary infrastructure and network needs. Digital Fortress has announced our new Chief Financial Officer, Stephan Termaat, illustrating an ongoing commitment to fortifying its executive team while enhancing services and capabilities for their customers.
Question: What are you most looking forward to accomplishing over the next year?
SV Response: As Digital Fortress closes 2021 and moves forward into the new year, our top priority is our customers. We will continue to enhance our service capabilities and expand on our partnership opportunities.
Question: What do you think is the greatest challenge in the industry and how is Digital Fortress working to overcome it?
SV Response: If 2021 is any indicator, Digital Fortress is excited about the expansion opportunities available throughout North America and beyond. We believe the data center space is poised for steady growth, and our operational excellence and experience positions us well to continue to identify underperforming assets and identify underserved markets for us to expand into. As more companies embrace digital transformation, we see workforce challenges arising. This is an opportunity for companies, like Digital Fortress, to illustrate their expertise as trusted advisors and providers. We see growth in services and opportunities for colocation operators and embrace the opportunity to deliver and assure best-in-class services in the years to come.
Question: What would Digital Fortress like to accomplish at Channel Partners Conference & Expo 2021?
SV Response: Digital Fortress’ goal in attending the Channel Partners Conference and Expo is to foster and create new and existing relationships with Channel Partners and Brokers who can be an extension of the Digital Fortress team.
Question: What can Digital Fortress offer to make life better or easier compared to the competition?
SV Response: Partnering with Digital Fortress enables you to expand your reach while raising the bar of what’s possible. From a top-down approach, partners experience direct connections to our executive team while they align our partner’s goals with the Digital Fortress mission to offer the most flexible solutions to our customers. Key benefits of partnering with Digital Fortress include straightforward contracts, aggressive pricing, implementation management, promotions and more.
Question: How do DF make things good for customers so that the overhead on my business is reduced in terms of customer service?
SV Response: Digital Fortress has industry leading Customer Service. With our 24/7 support with a 15-minute response time or less, our team is ready to serve our customers. We provide flexible solutions and terms to meet the most discerning customer requirements. We also provide competitive pricing to meet the needs of immediate and long-term budget goals. We are here to work with you every step of the way.
Question: What tools do DF have for me to make the process of managing and signing up customers simple?
SV Response: Today, we have a Partner Page and portal on our Digital Fortress website where current and potential partners can go to Register a Deal with us. This then feeds into our internal sales systems to ensure low latency between registering the deal and closing the sale.
Question: How accessible is the team when I need human help?
SV Response: When needing help, you will have direct connection to the source. Whether it be our Channel executive, Sales executive, Network executive, or Operations executive, our 360 degree approach allows our partners to have direct access to the top of the department they need. We take pride in our partner ecosystem and want to ensure a smooth process of closing a deal.
Question: Financially, can I make money in dealing with Digital Fortress?
SV Response: Absolutely. Digital Fortress offers competitive compensation plans for our partners. Generating new sales that lead to both the growth of Digital Fortress and its partners is vital to all of our success. As our nationwide footprint grows, and our global partner alliances expand, our ecosystem partners benefit every step of the way.
To learn more about Digital Fortress, visit https://digital-fortress.com/. To schedule a meeting with the Digital Fortress team at Channel Partners Conference & Expo, please visit https://digital-fortress.com/channel-partners-rsvp/.
