Vantage Data Centers Announces Leadership Changes

Appoints Sureel Choksi as President and Chief Executive Officer and Jim Trout as Founder and CTO

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Jul 18, 2013, 03:00 ET

SANTA CLARA, Calif., July 18, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Vantage Data Centers ("Vantage"), a leading data center provider backed by Silver Lake, today announced the appointment of Sureel Choksi as President and Chief Executive Officer. Mr. Choksi will continue his current duties as a member of Vantage's board of directors. As President and CEO, Mr. Choksi succeeds Jim Trout, who has transitioned into a new role as Founder and Chief Technology Officer, where he is responsible for data center design and construction and corporate strategy. Mr. Trout will also continue to serve as a member of Vantage's board of directors.

"We are very pleased to welcome Sureel Choksi as CEO," said Jim Trout. "I am proud of what we have accomplished in building Vantage into a leading wholesale data center provider with campuses in Santa Clara, California and Quincy, Washington. Sureel's extensive experience in the Internet infrastructure industry will help us better serve our customers and build upon our operational excellence." Mr. Trout added, "I'm looking forward to partnering with Sureel to lead Vantage's next phase of growth."

"I have worked closely with Vantage's management team over the past few months and am impressed with the company's rapid growth and innovation in highly scalable, resilient and energy efficient data centers," Sureel Choksi said. "Most remarkable is the fact that Vantage has leased over 25MW of capacity to high quality customers in less than three years. I look forward to working with Jim Trout and the entire Vantage team to continue delivering world-class data center solutions to our customers."

Mr. Choksi is a senior member of Silver Lake's Value Creation Team. He has over 15 years of experience as an executive in the Internet infrastructure industry. Prior to joining Silver Lake, he was Chief Executive Officer of Elevation Data Centers, a private-equity backed roll-up vehicle. Previously, Mr. Choksi held several executive roles with Level 3 Communications, including Chief Marketing Officer, President of Wholesale Markets, Executive Vice President of Services, Chief Financial Officer, Group Vice President of Corporate Development and Treasurer. Before Level 3, Mr. Choksi worked in venture capital at TeleSoft Partners and investment banking at Gleacher & Company. Mr. Choksi received a B.S. in Economics from the Wharton School with concentrations in Finance, Accounting and Entrepreneurial Management, and a B.A.S. from the School of Engineering and Applied Science, both from the University of Pennsylvania.

About Vantage:

Vantage Data Centers is an award winning data center services company based in Santa Clara, CA with an additional campus in Quincy, WA. Vantage offers highly scalable and reliable data centers to the most demanding large enterprises, web companies and service providers. The company offers its customers unique value through its energy efficient, environmentally conscious and highly scalable designs, coupled with world-class customer support and an engineering driven solutions approach to meet customer-specific requirements.

About Silver Lake

Silver Lake is the global leader in private investments in technology and technology-enabled industries. Silver Lake invests with the strategic and operational insights of an experienced industry participant. The firm has approximately 100 investment and value creation professionals located in New York, Menlo Park, San Mateo, London, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Tokyo and manages over $23 billion. The Silver Lake Partners portfolio includes or has included technology and technology-enabled industry leaders such as Alibaba, Allyes, Ameritrade, Avago, Avaya, Business Objects, Flextronics, Gartner, Gerson Lehrman Group, Instinet, Intelsat, Interactive Data Corporation, IPC Systems, MCI, Mercury Payment Systems, MultiPlan, the NASDAQ OMX Group, NetScout, NXP, Sabre, Seagate Technology, Serena Software, Skype, Spreadtrum, SunGard Data Systems, UGS, Vantage Data Centers and William Morris Endeavor. For more information about Silver Lake and its entire portfolio, please visit www.silverlake.com.