We ‘Deep Dive’ with John Thompson, Managing Director, Advanced Power Technology, who tells us about life inside and outside the office.
What would you describe as your most memorable achievement in the data centre industry?
There have been so many and most I can’t talk about due to the confidentiality around the client and the NDAs. One of the most memorable was putting a square data centre into a round tower room for a well-known premiership club. The project was an interesting challenge and as you can imagine, the drawings are very distinctive.
We also had an amazing experience providing a prefabricated data centre module for an F1 customer during COVID-19. The most memorable aspect was that we didn’t go to site until the night before the module arrived on the low loader. All the planning and preparation meetings were conducted on Microsoft Teams. This was done out of necessity, but it brought many advantages – mainly that most stakeholders were present at every meeting, so items got resolved more quickly and we were able to hand it over 13 weeks after the initial order.
What first made you think of a career in technology/data centres?
Necessity was the main driver. I needed a proper job and wanted to get married and have a family. After finishing an engineering apprenticeship, I trained as an actor and spent a year in the West End. I did an episode of Red Dwarf and The League of Gentlemen, a bit of Shakespeare and many other adventures including jousting for the Royal Armouries.
After deciding to come back to Yorkshire, I started at APT – an Elite Partner to Schneider Electric – in 2007. The company was founded by my brother and based on supplying the most efficient UPS of its time. Eventually, I took ownership of the company in 2016 and we now provide turnkey data centre solutions including Schneider Electric’s EcoStruxure Row Data Centres and APC Uninterruptible Power Supplies (UPS).
What style of management philosophy do you employ with your current position?
I have come to recognise it as servant leadership. I love seeing others develop their potential and take ownership of what they are doing whilst I watch, learn and support their initiatives. I still have to take overall responsibility but there is great freedom and joy in letting go and trusting others.
What do you think is the current hot talking point within the data centre space?
AI is the hot topic at the moment and everyone is talking about how it will be used to make data centres better, but also what processing power it is going to require and the need to create more data centre space. This leads into the discussion around the use of liquid immersion cooling to cope with the increased power and cooling needed by AI.
How do you deal with stress and unwind outside the office?
Lots of different ways really. I sing in a choir and I love dinghy sailing in the Lakes with friends and family, but that can come with its own stress depending on wind speeds.
What do you currently identify as the major areas of investment in your industry?
With the new regulations coming in around monitoring and metering it’s important that companies invest in the systems to enable compliance. If they don’t already have metering and DCIM software these will need to be deployed so that they can capture, analyse and report on energy and water use. It’s also important for us to ensure customers can quantify the savings they are making with investments in their IT infrastructures. The visibility the software provides helps customers to run the systems they have as sustainably and efficiently as possible.
As customers prepare for this, APT has been investing in people in terms of training and making sure we have the right personnel to work with our clients and help them understand how the monitoring systems can serve them.
We aren’t the only ones investing in people, data centres are the digital heart of society and the industry needs to attract people who can really make a difference at all levels.
What changes to your job role have you seen in the last year and how do you see these developing in the coming months?
In my role with APT, I have recently become more of the face of the company, whether that be taking part in a panel session or speaking to press. With the increasing exposure of the industry, people have also started taking more of a personal interest in me and my career journey which has been a surprising development. The industry needs people with vision and imagination to create innovative solutions around the increased digital processing that is coming. It needs to attract younger talent and for people to see that you can use skills from all different sectors. An acting background has given me a different outlook on solving problems and communicating new ideas to customers. Perhaps by people seeing different paths into the sector this will help the industry attract the best and most diverse talent.
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