A Conversation with Frank Mobley, CEO of Immedion
May 1, 2013
By Alan Cooper
May 1, 2013
MidlandsBiz:
Where were you born? What was your education? Where did you work in the early part of your career?
Frank Mobley:
I was born in Chester, South Carolina. After attending the Universityof South Carolina where I majored in electrical engineering, I spent the first fifteen years of my career working in the independent telephoneindustry. In 2000, I left to go and work for a regional data centercompany. Our market strategy was to open data centers in tier 2 citieslike Jacksonville, Florida; Charlotte, North Carolina; and Louisville,Kentucky.
MidlandsBiz:
When and why did you start Immedion?
Frank Mobley:
I left that company in late 2006 with a business plan in hand and agoal to open enterprise level data centers in the next tier markets,tier 3 markets, if you will. We started in Greenville, a medium sizedcity with a very robust business community that is centrally locatedbetween Atlanta and Charlotte. Since then, we have built additionaldata centers Columbia, and Charleston and acquired a data center inAsheville, North Carolina.
One of our differentiators is that we work primarily with localcompanies in each of the markets that we serve. Whereas many of ourcompetitors do their business over the web or the phone, we sit down atthe table from our customers, listen to their needs and help themresolve their problems. We take a lot of accountability andresponsibility for what we sell and deliver.
MidlandsBiz:
What is the core business of Immedion?
Frank Mobley:
At our core, Immedion is an infrastructure provider. Infrastructurestarts with the data center space including backup generators,uninterruptible power supplies, and redundant air conditioning and goesthrough computer and networking components, which Immedion providesthrough our Enterprise Cloud service. Enterprise Cloud is our fastestgrowing line of business.
Immedion also provides IT management services such as server monitoring and management, network security, and data protection (backup)services.
Our goal is to provide key IT related services so our customers can focus on their core business.
MidlandsBiz:
What are the keys to success in the industry?
Frank Mobley:
Our customers are generally looking for reliability, security, and high levels of support. All four Immedion data centers have redundancythrough their systems including power, air conditioning, and Internetconnections for high levels of reliability. We also incorporatemultiple tiers of physical security including biometrics, videosurveillance, and other measures to keep our customers’ informationsafe. Finally, and most importantly, Immedion places a huge emphasis on Going above and beyond to keep customers’ critical systems online.
MidlandsBiz:
Talk about the origins of this industry?
Frank Mobley:
The industry started with the dot-com boom of the late 1990’s whencompanies like Amazon, Yahoo, etc. needed to set up and operate reliable websites. Dot-coms didn’t want to spend precious capital by investingin computer room infrastructure so they outsourced these functions tocompanies like Immedion.
Several other factors contributed to the growth in this industry overthe past decade. In 2001, when the dot-com economy collapsed you sawmajor pieces of legislation like Gramm-Leach Bliley and Sarbanes Oxleyenacted, both with parts pertaining to the security and management ofdata. These legislative acts required financial institutions and public companies to institute safeguards to effectively secure data and todevelop disaster recovery plans for the long term well-being of clientsand investors.
The tragedy of September 11, 2001 and the unusually active hurricaneperiod between 2003 and 2005 also cause more traditional brick andmortar companies to move critical data and systems to safer locations.
Lastly, as the Internet evolved into a primary point of commerce forthose same traditional brick and mortar companies, system uptime becamecritical. Computer down time means lost business, lost productivityand, often, a public black eye for the company. Therefore, businesses are looking increasingly to companies like ours to outsource theircomputer infrastructure needs.
Skip ahead to 2013, and the landscape has changed in the data centerindustry. Many of these large companies – Facebook, Google and Amazon – now have built their own data centers, some of which are here in SouthCarolina.
MidlandsBiz:
Are these your main competitors?
Frank Mobley:
We do compete from time to time with national providers like Amazon,Google and Rackspace as well as other regional companies who offer cloud and data center solutions. Our biggest competitor, however, is acompany’s in-house data room. Our customers often compare accepting the risks of leaving the systems onsite versus outsourcing theinfrastructure to Immedion.
MidlandsBiz:
Often companies will have sophisticated internal IT departments,including Chief Information Officers (CIO’s). Do these companies useyour services?
Frank Mobley:
Yes, definitely, but it depends on the company. Internal ITdepartments tend to focus on their company’s business specificapplications and what makes their business money. We focus on thephysical side of the technology – the servers, backups, generators,uninterrupted power supply (USP’s) etc. CIOs, CFOs understand the value of having their staffs focused on key business related functions rather than worrying about generator or air conditioning maintenance.
MidlandsBiz:
For companies that have an in-house system, what is usually the area that is most in need of upgrading?
Frank Mobley:
I think inadequate power to the building and non-redundant airconditioning systems are the primary challenges that businesses runinto. Being able to cost justify the necessary redundancies, includingmultiple Internet providers, is generally difficult for all but thelargest companies.
MidlandsBiz:
What are some of the challenges that you have faced in building your business?
Frank Mobley:
With any new business, selling is the primary challenge. My researchtold me that there were enough businesses in smaller markets that wouldprefer to have their systems housed locally, but there was still riskinvolved. We had to prove that a data center could thrive in a smallermarket.
It took about two years for the Greenville data center to becomeprofitable. Once we saw that the model worked, we expanded to Columbia(where we are located in SCRA’s Innovation Center), and two years afterthat, we raised additional funds and opened in Charleston. We enteredthe Asheville market through an acquisition. Geographically it justmade a lot of sense for us to enter into that market.
We have had an outstanding four years of growth. From a revenueperspective we have tripled in size and we have doubled in size in terms of the number of employees. We were named one of the 25 FastestGrowing Companies in 2012 and we are proud that most of our growth hasbeen organic. We have a great sales team that has done an outstandingjob of building trust out in the communities that we serve.
MidlandsBiz:
Why Charleston? Is that not right in the bull’s eye of a possible hurricane?
Frank Mobley:
Charleston is a city that has a robust technology sector and is verydemanding in terms of infrastructure security. Particularly inside thebeltway in Charleston, there are lots of companies that run the risk otheir computer space going under water in a flood. Our Charleston datacenter is located in an elevated area in North Charleston that wejokingly refer to as Mount Charleston. We are located in a businesspark with other critical facilities including the new Charleston CountyE911 center and a large hospital data center meaning that in the eventof a power outage or large storm, our area will get a lot of attention. On top of that, our facility is equipped with multiple generators andmultiple connections to the power grid meaning the potential for a longterm power outage is extremely remote. We also constructed the building beyond the already stringent Charleston building codes so that it would withstand hurricane force winds.
MidlandsBiz:
How did you finance the start up of the company? It seems to me that it would be very capital intensive to build data centers.
Frank Mobley:
In November 2006, I had a business plan in hand and seven yearsexperience in the industry, but I needed investors. I started withfriends and family and some of my own money. That got about half of what we needed for our initial startup. In January 2007, I ran into an oldfriend of mine at Comporium Communications, an independenttelecommunications company based in Rock Hill, SC, that was looking todiversify its business. They liked our business plan and the team we had in place so they decided to invest.
MidlandsBiz:
Where do you see the company in the next three years?
Frank Mobley:
We built a lot of space in 2012. We opened our Charleston location and we expanded our data centers in Greenville and Asheville, adding about15,000 overall square feet to our footprint. This year we are veryfocused tactically on filling that new space.
We always like to say that we are opportunistic. We have a greatinvestor group that is intent on growing the business. If somethingwere to come along in the way of an acquisition that made sense, wewould certainly look at that.
MidlandsBiz:
How were you affected by the economic downturn?
Frank Mobley:
We were able to weather that storm pretty well. One of the advantagesof our business model is that it is based on recurring monthly business; we don’t have to sell widgets every month in order to stay above water, so to speak. Some of our clients certainly had problems, which in turn means that we had problems as well. It made selling harder, but wewere still able to add consistently to our customer base.
MidlandsBiz:
Do you have any suggestions to prevent people from hacking into a company’s computer systems?
Frank Mobley:
Network security is a very complex business that is evolving fromminute to minute, hour to hour. People are constantly coming up withthousands of new hacks every day. It takes a dedicated organization todeal with all the complexities of network security.
Firewalls are fairly easy to set up and manage and are a minimumsafeguard. But a firewall is like putting a fence around your property(a fence around your computer) with gates open for certain types oftraffic to get in and out. We suggest that companies implement services like intrusion detection and prevention (IDPS) and penetrationtesting. The former is like putting a security guard at each of thosegates to watch the traffic go back and forth and stop the bad guys fromgoing in. The latter is where we actually go in and try to hack yournetwork to determine points of vulnerability. Both of these techniquestake firewalls to the next level.
As we all know, many high profile companies have been hacked. In manycases it is through the social engineering of passwords, when thirdparty entities trick people, often employees, into giving out criticalpasswords.
MidlandsBiz:
How do you measure success?
Frank Mobley:
What I am most proud of is starting a local South Carolina basedbusiness from scratch. I want to be successful with my customers; thatis what makes me happy. I want to be able to hold my head up highwherever I meet a customer because I know that we have done a great job.
The other thing that defines success for us is meeting our commitmentsto the stakeholders in the company. One key stakeholder is obviouslyour investors – part of that is still my family, ComporiumCommunications, and also Monks Corner-based Home Telecom. Theyentrusted us with their capital; we need to do deliver a good return ontheir investment. Another key stakeholder is our employees. We want to build a business where our employees enjoy coming to work every day.
Currently, we have an ongoing company that is doing well, our customers are happy with what we are delivering, and our investors and employeesare happy with how we are doing it. That is certainly how I measure mysuccess.
