Digital Realty Rejigs Top Management Roles

Digital Realty has made some tweaks to its top-level management team as the company continues the process of optimizing its operations for the future.

CTO Jim Smith will take over the responsibilities of David Schirmacher, senior vice president of portfolio operations. He will remain CTO.

Schimacher’s new role will be senior vice president of design and construction, but he’ll also continue to oversee development and implementation of EnVision, the data center infrastructure management software the company has designed in-house. Schirmacher has led the DCIM effort from the start.

This is the latest change in the top ranks of the world’s largest provider of wholesale data center space. The other recent change was the appointment of CFO William Stein to the role of permanent CEO in November 2014. He had served as interim CEO ever since the abrupt resignation of the real estate investment trust’s founding CEO Michael Foust in March of last year.

The point of the latest reorganization was to better leverage Smith’s and Schirmacher’s respective sets of expertise. “This organizational change is in keeping with our commitment to unlock the outstanding talent within Digital Realty as we focus on how to best utilize our resources to drive future growth,” Stein said in a statement.

Organizational changes are part of a broader set of adjustments San Francisco-based Digital Realty has been going through since Foust’s departure. The company is in the process of identifying and selling off real estate assets that are not core to its strategy.

It has also been entering into partnerships with a variety of service providers to be able to offer more support to its customers beyond its traditional bread-and-butter turnkey and powered-shell data center space.

Investors have responded positively to the changes over the course of last year. The company’s stock is about 60 percent higher now than it was toward the end of 2013.

Today’s news, however, had a negative impact on Digital’s stock, which was down about 1.6 percent in after-hours trading.