A milestone to celebrate – 10 years of VIRTUS Operations

Daryl Seaton, CFO

I feel tremendously lucky to have spent the last decade at VIRTUS - a company that we have grown from a wide-eyed start-up raising money for our first facility, to becoming a market leader. Putting this into context, today single data halls of our latest sites are larger than the entire projects we built in our early years, and our customer base (that we once dreamt of having) now represents the largest and most prolific growth companies driving the sector (and digital economy) forwards.

This is of course a hugely capital-intensive business, and as well as growing the finance team itself, raising funding to realise our growth ambitions has been a continuous focus. Over the last 10 years, and hopefully throughout the future, we have been fortunate to have worked with a wide variety of pioneering, forward thinking and ambitious partners - all of whom have challenged and stretched me and our core management team to be brave, to think big and realise our vision.

I couldn’t be prouder of where we’ve got to, and I am genuinely excited for what lies ahead on our journey.

Venessa Wilson, Marketing Director

Without doubt, a key highlight in VIRTUS’ history is the complete redesign and launch of a refreshed VIRTUS Data Centres brand to truly reflect who VIRTUS is, what we stand for and what we deliver. This included a new website launched in 2014, and a full suite of collateral to match. Other key milestones that come to mind are our launch of LONDON2 – also in 2014 – where we hosted a 100+ person launch event (back when we could celebrate things like that together). In a similar vein, we were delighted to hold the STT GDC Leadership Event in London in 2018, where VIRTUS hosted over 150 members of the worldwide leadership team, featuring a gala dinner at the Tower of London.

Growth and innovation are mainstays across all of VIRTUS over the past 10 years. One of the biggest achievements for the Sales & Marketing Team was the launch of our Stockley Park campus, one of the largest campuses of its type in Europe. We’ve also invested a lot of time and resource to engage positively and proactively with the media, ensuring that the VIRTUS’ story, expertise, experience and innovation is shared with organisations through the media, with record numbers of positive stories in 2020.

Helen Kinsman, Head of Commercial Operations

For me, there have been many highlights working at VIRTUS over the last 10 years. Three key milestones on our journey stand out.

Right at the very inception of VIRTUS, before we had even built a facility, we worked hard to secure our first customer at LONDON1. Achieving this released funding for the build, creating the first data centre in our now expansive portfolio. Many of our customers who joined us at LONDON1 are still partnering with VIRTUS today, which is testament to the ongoing operational excellence and positive relationships we have with our customers.

Secondly, it was an important moment for VIRTUS when we secured our first hyperscale customer. The growth and development of hyperscale cloud and related industries has been fascinating to watch, and we’re proud to play a fundamental role in supporting the UK and global digital economy that rely on hyperscale cloud every day.

More recently, a key highlight has been finding, and then subsequently developing, our Stockley Park Campus. Made up of four state-of-the-art data centres, the campus is already supporting the growth of our customers. To build a campus like this, in one of the largest data centre markets in the world, is a huge achievement that we are very proud of.

Neil Cresswell, CEO

Over the last ten years, the data centre industry has gone through seismic changes. Once seen as “just” an IT concern, data centre strategy is now a crucial priority of businesses and Governments around the world – as they recognise how important these industrial monoliths are to keeping businesses, societies and economies up and running.

Ten years ago, when VIRTUS opened its doors to its first data centre, we couldn’t have predicted many of the world events we reflect on now. From the growth of hyperscale cloud and the explosion in data consumption, to the world-stopping Covid-19 pandemic (and the demands it placed on digital infrastructure), the last decade has posed many growth opportunities as well as many challenges.

But importantly, VIRTUS has always been prepared for a fast-paced, quick-changing, global environment - geared up to pivot, flex and grow alongside the changing needs of its customers and society in general.

So, as we celebrate ten years in business, it’s been great to look back on some highlights from our team, many of whom have been with us since the very beginning.

I’m really looking forward to the next ten years - in London, the rest of Europe, and also further afield. The demand for more data and digital services locally and globally and the data centres that power them is only accelerating.

Currently in the world, there are 80 cities with over five million people, and most now have big data centre markets of 100MW or more. And there are 500 cities in the world with over one million people in. Maybe in 2031, they will all have a 100MW DC, and maybe it will be a VIRTUS one?