Imagine the world 20 years ago and it’s hard to believe the technological evolution that has happened in these last two decades. From iPods, smartphones, and social media to streaming platforms, virtual reality, and autonomous vehicles, our society is increasingly digital. We rely on being able to connect instantly to people, places, and things all over the world, from anywhere, and we’re moving toward harnessing the potential of artificial intelligence (AI) and other high-performance computing technology to support our daily lives.
At the heart of this digital society lies data. Our world depends on it. That’s why it’s more important than ever to have your data globally connected, locally supported, safe yet open, and ready for the future.
That’s where Digital Realty comes in. For over two decades, the company has served as one of the critical foundations of the digital world. Here is their story.
Charting a Path for Digital Progress
From its beginning, Digital Realty has been looking toward the demands of tomorrow while simultaneously meeting the needs of today. Originally founded in 2001 as GI Partners, a private equity firm, focused on buying undervalued or distressed data centers in the wake of the dot-com crash, the company began acquiring data centers and Internet gateway properties in major US markets like San Francisco, New York, Boston, and Dallas. Initially, GI Partners entered the space not with the foresight of predicting cloud or AI, but with the understanding that controlling data transit and network facilities provided inherent value.
After officially debuting as Digital Realty, a real estate investment trust (REIT) with 24 data centers in 2004, the company entered a period of rapid expansion. With the surge in Internet usage, web applications, mobile phones, and enterprise IT systems that characterized the mid-2000s—and the increasing need for secure, always-on infrastructure to support it all—Digital Realty invested heavily in building out greenfield developments and retrofitting existing properties. To support these increasing digital infrastructure demands, they also launched their modular Turn-Key Flex® design, which allowed seamless scalability with predictable performance and cost so businesses could quickly adapt to changing infrastructure needs without service interruption.
