“ Over the past 10 years it has been exciting to see more women selling wholesale space , working as brokers , and what I especially love to see is many more women in IT and engineering roles ”
– Michelle Forbes , SDirector of Enterprise Data Center Solutions : Wholesale , Custom & Managed / Cloud Services at QTS
Gardner , Forbes , and Keller , like Greenwood , were all excited enough by the concept of data centers to enter the industry at the soonest opportunity . Gardner was enticed by the looming presence of the World Wide Web in 1995 , and entered into a job selling web hosting and colocation services . The company she joined – Best Internet – launched one of the first ever ecommerce sites and sold eBay its first data center colocation cage . Gardner introduced Forbes to the carrier-neutral colocation world in the late 90s , and she has been selling data center space ever since .
“ I knew it was an exciting time and the internet was here to stay ,” Forbes says , “ and with that , data centers were an essential part . Today it ’ s incredible to think about how almost everything we use is likely running out of a data center , and maybe even one I lease them space for .”
After the dot com crash in 2003 , Gardner took a break to get married and have children , before she wanted to get back into the data center industry . Thanks to her enthusiasm for returning to the game and a swiftly-reviving industry , she found a comfortable role once again .
“ As I look back over the past
194 July 2017