Executive Spotlight: Stuart Dyer, First VP of Data Center Group at CBRE

Stuart Dyer, first vice president of the data center advisory group at CBRE, recently spoke with the Potomac Officers Club in an exclusive Executive Spotlight interview to share industry advice, lessons learned and key achievements from his career thus far in the federal landscape. At CBRE, Dyer leverages his business development and data center expertise along with his international sales experience to help federal and industry customers navigate colocation and land acquisition purchasing on a global scale. His prior experience includes time at IBM, CyrusOne and Apptix.

What can you tell us about your background and how you’ve been able to adapt to the ever-changing challenges of the federal landscape over the course of your career?

“The federal landscape, as it relates to data center outsourcing and leveraging commercial providers, has changed significantly in the past decade. When I started helping the government with their data center consolidation efforts a decade ago, there was a hesitancy to move to public cloud or commercial providers that housed government infrastructure off-premises from government facilities. Over the years, cloud security has improved, the culture within the government has changed and today, the government is looking to commercial providers as their primary and trusted partners in the IT modernization journey. We will see a significant, year-over-year increase in spending from the federal government on public cloud and outsourced infrastructure, while it simultaneously shutters its owned and operated data center facilities.”

When did you decide to pursue a career in the federal landscape and what were the key tasks that you wanted to complete? Any bigger goals you still want to accomplish?

“In 2014, I decided to pursue my career in the federal landscape. As you may well know, Northern Virginia is home to more data center space and capacity than anywhere else in the world. Furthermore, the federal government is the largest buyer of IT services globally. While back in 2014, there was hesitancy from the government to use third parties, whether cloud or commercial data centers, today that paradigm has changed. My goal is to help the government achieve their IT modernization goals by helping connect government to the commercial industry which sits right in their backyard.”

What do you believe are your core strengths as a leader and what lessons taught you the most about driving success?

“As a leader, having highly effective communication skills has helped me work successfully across commercial industry, the system integrator community and most importantly, with the federal agencies directly. When working with the government, one must have resilience and patience, as modernization initiatives can take multiple years to go from inception to actual execution. The ability to collaborate with key industry partners to provide the best overall solution to the federal government is also something that requires sufficient experience.”

Who are the executives that have inspired you the most over the course of your career?

“Bob Fecteau, former CIO of SAIC, was instrumental early on in my career and in helping me find a path to success. As a young BD rep, it was amazing to see the kindness and mentorship Bob extended towards me. He gave me great guidance on what I needed to do to be successful in this space.

The second executive that has been highly influential to my career is Bob Gemmill, SVP of Supply Chain at Leidos. I had the honor of working closely with Bob and his team through the Leidos and IS&GS integration, and to see the leadership and coordination he brought to the partner community was inspiring. Getting to know Bob and the Leidos team throughout that project was a rewarding experience for me, and it showed me the true value in establishing a strategic relationship, not a transactional one.”

If your career came to an end tomorrow, what would you say have been the most significant accomplishments of your career? Where do you feel you made the most impact?

“Well hopefully I still have a long while to go! However, I would say that my impact has been in connecting commercial data centers into the federal space. I’ve helped connect great data center companies that build a tremendous product, employ great people, operate at the highest level, but do not know how or aren’t sure how to tap into the federal market. Being the industry expert who connects the federal agencies and system integrators to these providers has not only been a fulfilling experience, but also has had the most impact on the industry and my career.”