DataSite – How a Fortress for the Digital World is Built

The founder and CEO of DataSite, Jeff Burges, didn’t start out with dreams of owning and operating data centers. But after completing his BA in Business Administration from USC in 1985 Jeff made the decision to obtain his real estate broker’s license and go into business with his father in commercial and industrial real estate. Their focus was in the downtown San Diego and South Bay industrial markets and for the next three years Jeff began honing his skills and his natural “nose” for procuring and brokering large industrial and commercial real estate deals.

Between 1987- 1989 Jeff made a move that allowed him to really get into the inner workings of development feasibility, market surveys, effective leasing, sale evaluations and financial analysis. During those years he worked at two in-house brokerage services companies – The Phair Company and South Bay Commercial Brokers. Sharpening his natural abilities for finding great deals and being able to analyze markets to leverage the best possible outcome, Jeff asked all the right questions and took every opportunity to amass an incredible amount of valuable knowledge and skills. He also had his first opportunity at managing a sales team during this time.

In 1989 Mr. Burges made a move to Nexus Development Corporation and over the next three years he was a Senior Marketing Representative responsible for the development and implementation of the marketing and management strategy for over 800,000 square feet of Class “A” office and scientific/research/laboratory space in seven development projects in San Diego.

His successes at Nexus provided him an opportunity to next take on the role of Senior Property Manager and Manager of the San Diego office for Paragon Group in 1992. This section of his path to data centers allowed him the opportunity to really show off his property management skills. He was responsible for a $50M portfolio of commercial and multi-family residential property. Some of his clients at that time included Wells Fargo Bank, Riverbank Financial, Yale Properties and Bank of America Investment Real Estate.

The door that opened from this experience is what ultimately pulled him down the path of data centers and colocation space. In 1994, Jeff took a position with a client, Yale Properties where he oversaw the acquisition, redevelopment and asset management of seven major telecommunications and data center assets. Working with virtually every major telecommunication network provider in the United States he came to really understand how data centers worked, what their importance was and how the birth of the Internet was going to change the digital and physical landscape of our culture moving forward.

From 1994 to 2003 Mr. Burges served as the Chief Operating Office of Yale Property acquiring properties, property managing, leasing and running offices. At the same time utilizing his extensive knowledge and skill base regarding unique investment properties that benefited from those companies’ extensive asset management. Then in 2003, Mr. Burges took a leap of faith and started his own property management company – Burges Property + Company. This privately held commercial real estate investment and asset management firm had two primary objectives:

• Acquire unique investment properties that benefit from the company’s extensive asset management skills and experience,
• Provide those same asset management skills, on a contracted basis, to select institutional property owners and select corporate real estate executives

Burges Property + Company utilized its experience and vision by acquiring first-class data center assets in Los Angeles, Orlando and Atlanta. The firm assembled a team of technical consultants to join with seasoned executives with over 25 years of ownership and management experience in telecommunications and data center real estate.

So after 20+ years acquiring, managing and leasing commercial, residential, industrial, telecom and data center properties Jeff made the decision to start the next chapter – DataSite! The vision of which is to offer a colocation and custom data center suite product designed to solve the complex real estate challenge for IT intensive users from the corporate enterprise, to the managed service provider, to the Internet content firm.

“We aren’t the Cloud - We are where the Cloud lives!”