Playboy’s First Data Center, or Birth of the Internet Colo

Peter Ferris has sat in a front-row seat to some of the seminal moments in the development of internet infrastructure as we know it, both as a spectator and as an active participant. He was deeply involved in establishment of some of the first data centers that turned the combination of real estate and access to networks into a business.

Some of his early customers included Playboy, which at the time (in the early 90s) was one of the most highly visited websites, hosted on 15 to 20 racks’ worth of data center gear; an NBC executive channel for business users, one of the early internet resources geared for business; as well as Netscape, Geocities, and the gaming site Happy Puppy, among others.

And Ferris has sat in that front-row seat ever since, mostly as one of the key execs at Equinix, which today is the world’s largest provider of interconnection and colocation services.

Because of his experience, we figured Ferris would be an ideal guest for the debut episode of The Data Center Podcast, which we’re launching today. We sat down with him after his keynote presentation at Data Center World Global in Los Angeles back in April for a mini lesson in internet history and to get a behind-the-scenes glimpse into how today’s cloud giants and enterprise data center users are building out their digital infrastructure.

About The Data Center Podcast

On this show, produced by Yevgeniy Sverdlik and Data Center Knowledge, we’ll be interviewing top business and technology leaders in the data center industry about the latest trends to help you stay informed about the present, knowledgeable about the past, prepared for the future, and, hopefully, entertained. We promise to keep it interesting!

Expect new episodes of the podcast to come out once every two weeks (our next one will feature John Gilmartin, VP and GM, Integrated Systems Business Unit, VMware, to talk about VMware’s cloud strategy now that this pivotal company in the data center industry’s history is no longer trying to be a cloud service provider, and as it adjusts to its new parent Dell Technologies).

You can download or stream The Data Center Podcast on or , and we’re working on making it available on iTunes and other platforms in the near future.

Enjoy, and please send us comments and suggestions for the show. We really love those. We also love when you help us spread the word about our content. Please do share it on social media and tell your colleagues and anyone else who’s interested in the data center industry that they should really check out The Data Center Podcast to hear from some of the brightest minds in the market.

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