Data Center Guru Mark Thiele Makes a Switch, Joins Cloud Startup

Mark Thiele, a well-known figure in the data center industry, has joined an enterprise cloud technology startup called Apcera. He was previously executive VP of ecosystem development at Switch, the company that builds and operates some of the world’s largest data center campuses.

Mark Thiele

Thiele has been a prolific blogger and conference speaker on all things related to data centers and IT infrastructure. In the past, he has led data center strategy at VMware and overseen global IT infrastructure at Brocade.

Here’s an article on data center containers Thiele wrote for Data Center Knowledge in 2012.

He is president and founder of Data Center Pulse, a non-profit that promotes sharing of best practices between companies in the data center industry.

Thiele joined Apcera as chief strategy officer, a role in which he will be involved in everything from developing and executing strategic initiatives to developing the company’s roadmap and partnerships as it scales.

The startup’s technology helps enterprises manage complex hybrid IT environments that consist of on-premise infrastructure and cloud services.

He started at Switch about five years ago, when the company’s only site was its massive SuperNAP campus in Las Vegas. Since last year, Switch has been expanding aggressively, announcing big builds in the Reno, Nevada, area and Michigan, as well as internationally, in Italy and Thailand.