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Digital Realty Trust Promotes Jim Smith to Chief Technology Officer
August 2008 by Marc Jacob
Digital Realty Trust, Inc, the owner and manager of corporate and Internet gateway datacenters, has promoted Jim Smith to the role of Chief Technology Officer (CTO). Mr. Smith has served as the Company’s Vice President of Engineering. As the first person to hold the title of CTO at Digital Realty Trust, he will take the lead role in directing Digital Realty Trust’s implementation of datacenter technologies.
Last month, Mr. Smith was recognized in InfoWorld’s Top 25 Chief Technology Officers for 2008, a list of the top technologists in the IT industry. InfoWorld’s profile of Jim Smith put a spotlight on his role leading Digital Realty Trust’s green datacenter initiatives and his extensive industry education efforts to broaden adoption of green best practices. Digital Realty Trust has achieved a number of industry firsts for green datacenters, including building the first LEED Gold datacenter, being the first company to report PUE energy efficiency data about its datacenter facilities, being the first real estate company to become a Contributor Member of The Green Grid, and being the first company to adopt a number of other green best practices across its global portfolio of datacenter facilities.
As Vice President of Engineering, Jim Smith was responsible for all datacenter development projects, spearheaded the Company’s efficiency and green datacenter strategy, and managed power procurement and energy management. In the past three years, Mr. Smith and the Digital Realty Trust team have delivered more than 100,000 kW (100 MW) of UPS capacity on over 40 datacenter projects in North America and Europe — including the industry’s first LEED Gold certified Datacenter. Mr. Smith has a BSc in Chemistry from Fort Lewis College and an MBA from London Business School.
