The global interconnection and data centre company has announced that Karl Strohmeyer, Sara Baack, and Eric Schwartz have been promoted to chief customer and revenue officer, chief product officer, and chief strategy and development officer respectively. The new roles are effective from early Q2.
The C-level reshuffle comes “to address the growing opportunity for Equinix as a strategic platform on which customers architect their digital business”.
"As we continue to enhance the value of our global platform and serve an increasingly strategic role in the digital transformation of our customers, these changes to our organisation will enable us to advance our leadership as the trusted centre of a cloud-first world,” said Charles Meyers, who has been president and CEO of Equinix since September 2018.
“Karl, Sara and Eric have a combined 24 years in executive roles at Equinix, and I am supremely confident in their understanding of our customers as they continue to embrace and execute their transformation to digital business, and the unique opportunity that our organization has to serve them."
The changes will enable Equinix to further drive customer success and accelerate growth as companies embrace digital transformation and leverage Platform Equinix as their interconnected digital edge, via a global and private infrastructure that is located proximate to the cloud and high-value ecosystems of strategic business partners.
Karl Strohmeyer: Chief Customer and Revenue Officer (pictured left)
Strohmeyer, currently president of the Americas, will begin serving as chief customer and revenue officer, overseeing the company's overall go-to-market strategy. Reporting to Strohmeyer will be sales, marketing, customer care and experience, commercial solutions, and the company's regional management across the Americas, EMEA and Asia-Pacific.
This newly created global organisation will concentrate all of the company's customer-facing functions into a single organisation with a consolidated focus on the customer. This will allow a centralised ownership of the entire customer experience and enable Equinix to provide increased value as a trusted advisor to businesses undergoing digital transformation. As a part of this role, Strohmeyer will leverage the company's technology leadership and partner ecosystem to generate exceptional customer experiences.
Since joining Equinix in 2013, Strohmeyer has served as president of the Americas overseeing the regional management, strategy, sales and operations for Equinix in the US, Brazil, Canada and Colombia. Under his leadership, the Americas region, which is the company's largest region by revenue, has nearly doubled in size, growing from $1.3 billion in revenue in 2013 to $2.5 billion in revenue in 2018. He also oversaw one of the company's largest acquisitions and integrations to date with the $3.6 billion acquisition of 29 data centres from Verizon in 2017.
Sara Baack: Chief Product Officer (pictured centre)
Baack, who joined Equinix in 2012 and currently serves as chief marketing officer, will take on the role of chief product officer, leading product marketing, management, development and engineering across core colocation and interconnection offerings, as well as overseeing the company's edge services portfolio.
As CMO, Baack oversaw the business ideation and product development of a new portfolio of interconnection and commerce enablement services focused on next-generation enterprise IT architecture and hybrid cloud adoption. She also architected the repositioning of Equinix around the company's interconnection capabilities, cloud enablement and the interconnection oriented architecture (IOA) for enterprise.
Under Baack's leadership, Equinix intends to evolve Platform Equinix and strengthen the delivery of the compelling value that it provides to today's digital businesses and accelerate the development of new services.
Eric Schwartz: Chief Strategy and Development Officer (pictured right)
Schwartz, currently president of EMEA, will begin serving as chief strategy and development officer, overseeing corporate strategy, corporate development, business development, real estate, capital planning and the company's hyperscale initiatives.
Schwartz joined Equinix in 2006 and has served in various senior-level management roles with the company. He spearheaded Equinix's expansion to Europe, including the 2007 acquisition of IXEurope, as well as the 2016 acquisition of Telecity, and he has served as president, EMEA since 2008. Under his leadership, the EMEA region has expanded from $178 million in revenue in 2008 to $1.6 billion in 2018, and it now encompasses 73 International Business Exchange (IBX) data centres in 15 countries.
Schwartz's new role includes driving effective and holistic strategy and decision-making across the company to support both strategic and tactical elements of growth and expansion. As a part of this role, Schwartz will also ensure that Equinix continues to invest in the optimal capital and technology expansion needed to increase its value as the architecture of choice for businesses as they increasingly move their strategic infrastructure to Platform Equinix.
Some Equinix news over the past year:
Equinix Cloud Exchange experiences high uptake among network service providers
Private interconnection bandwidth to reach 8,200Tbps by 2021, says Equinix
Equinix to build new subsea cable across the English Channel
Equinix offers private connectivity to VMware Cloud via AWS Direct Connect
