Compass Datacenters has hired Jay Forester to be the company's senior vice president of Data Center Product Delivery, a new position at the company with responsibility for the construction and delivery of data center facilities across the United States. Forester joins Compass from Digital Realty, where his most recent title was vice president of construction, North America. Prior to joining Digital Realty, Forester worked for Fidelity Investments for several years as a senior manager of its data center assets.
"Jay played an instrumental role in developing and refining the construction and delivery methodology that was so central to Digital Realty's success. This background makes him the perfect choice to help us deliver on our re-invention of the process for data center development in a way that utilizes best practices from the manufacturing industry. Our methodology streamlines every aspect of the process — from supply chain to pre-manufacturing to on-site construction and final delivery — to provide our customers with a higher-quality, better-built standalone hardened data centers that are completed in a fraction of the time as traditional methods," said Chris Crosby, CEO of Compass Datacenters. "Jay's expertise will help us introduce this next generation of data center delivery in which industrialization transitions into productization, which is analogous to changes implemented in the auto industry by Honda in the mid-1970s."
Crosby added, "Jay's addition to the team will enable Compass' senior vice president of Acquisitions and Development Chris Curtis to focus on identifying, acquiring and developing new land sites for our customers. While we had always planned for this structure, we did not anticipate that the demand for our product-based approach would dictate the need so soon. With Jay and Chris's leadership, we have the best team in the industry to guide the process from land acquisition to delivery of fully commissioned data centers to our customers."