Steve Smith

Steve Smith is widely respected amongst the global ICT community. Steve has a deep background and expertise in managing market leading technology businesses, particularly in the data centre industry.

Steve served as CEO and President of Equinix Inc for over a decade (2007-2018), transforming it into the largest enterprise data centre platform in the world. Under Steve’s leadership, Equinix grew from 17 data centres operating in 10 markets and a US$2 billion market cap, to approximately 200 data centres with a US$38 billion market cap and operations in 24 countries on five continents.

Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, Steve is currently a Managing Director of GI Partners, a US based investment fund focussed on data centre, data transport, wireless and tech-enabled infrastructure investments in North America. Prior to his time at GI Partners and Equinix, Steve held senior leadership positions at Hewlett Packard (2005- 2006) which included serving as its Senior Vice President - Worldwide HP Services; Lucent Technologies Inc. (2004- 2005), where he was appointed as Vice President, Global Professional and Managed Services and Electronic Data Systems Corporation (EDS) (1987-2004), where he served in a number of capacities including Chief Sales Officer and President, Asia-Pacific.

Steve also had a successful eight-year career in the U.S. Army where, among other roles, he was aide de-camp to the office of the Commander in Chief of the U.S. Armed Forces in the Pacific. Steve holds a Bachelor of Science in Engineering from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.