On Veteran’s Day, we honor the tremendous sacrifices made by members of the U.S. armed forces and their families to preserve our freedom. As we salute our veterans this week (and every week), EdgeConneX is proud to stand alongside our long-time partner, Salute Mission Critical. Salute changes lives everyday as their team 
helps veterans obtain the skills needed to be placed in key jobs and in rewarding careers within our ever-growing data center industry. Bringing the resources and skilled personnel to provide the hands-on support and services needed, Salute’s veterans deliver the same discipline and integrity to serving its data center customers as they once brought to serving our country. EdgeConneX is proud to have been working with Salute for over five years and has partnered closely with Salute to hire from their skilled veteran workforce. Salute helps EdgeConneX deploy, maintain, manage, and secure our world-class data centers with military precision and high-quality results. The Salute team of veterans comprises all branches of the military with an average from the following branches:
• 35% Army
• 35% Marines
• 20% Navy
• 10% Air Force
We are honored to support Salute and the organization’s success as they are recognized globally for their collective and impactful efforts across our industry. Salute was recently shortlisted for the DataCenterDynamics Corporate Social Responsibility Award 2019. This prestigious award recognizes organizations that have forged a winning strategy for the ‘triple bottom line: people, planet and profit, aligning business goals with those of the wider community.’
Driving Positive Change
Salute Mission Critical transforms military veterans into world-class data center technicians. As a result, the organization is now a premier IT Data Center Lifecycle services company. Salute’s ability to recruit, train and support its teams is unique and applied in a highly-effective manner to fulfill its customers’ requirements anywhere – and has worked with EdgeConneX across 3 continents. Worldwide, Salute Mission Critical has 60 veterans working at EdgeConneX sites.
“Our close relationship with EdgeConneX has been unlike any other – and our partnership provides an excellent example of the real-world success of our work. EdgeConneX often refers to our “military DNA” and we have used that to support the company as it deploys edge facilities across the world. EdgeConneX supports our vision to serve as a ‘bridge’ to veterans to reach the data center industry and start rewarding careers. The double benefit of solving veteran unemployment and the personnel shortage has driven greater results than expected..” -Lee Kirby Co-Founder and Chairman of Salute Mission Critical
And they haven’t slowed down since. To support EdgeConneX in delivering and operating our global network of edge data centers, Salute provides the skilled technicians and workers needed to meet rapid deployment timeframes, along with the versatility needed to meet unique requirements of our customers. Precision, high-quality and reliability is exactly what is needed so that EdgeConneX data centers, over the longer term, can be operated using our patented, sophisticated EdgeOS Data Center Information Manager (DCIM) platform. EdgeOS, by the way, also recently won Global Carrier Award for Best Data Service Innovation – Mature Markets.
“Our work with Salute is just the right thing to do. What we found in our partnership with Salute is that we are working with people who thrive in our training environment, and have seen them move to varied roles throughout our data centers across the globe. It’s been the ultimate culmination of meeting a need for skilled workers and driving real change for the lives of our veterans.” – Randy Brouckman, CEO for EdgeConneX.
And this is why we agree with Lee when he said, “Salute brings the leadership and ability to adapt quickly—which is exactly what the industry needs. EdgeConneX clients are some of the most demanding and sophisticated clients in the world. The only way you can meet those needs is with reliable operations and a disciplined workforce. That is what we give to EdgeConneX and how we impact their customers.”
Learn more about Salute Mission Critical and the EdgeConneX partnership here.