Derek Garnier

Derek Garnier is a 30-year industry veteran in digital infrastructure, specializing in corporate strategy, and has successfully built, operated, and sold companies.

He was most recently co-founder of Arcadian Infracom, a long-haul fiber-optic company operating in the Southwest. Prior to Arcadian, Derek served as President and COO of Evocative Datacenters, the predecessor to VPLS, which he again joins as President and COO.

Derek also served as the CEO of Layer42 Networks, a national network services, and colocation provider, which he successfully exited in 2015 through a sale to Wave Broadband. Post-acquisition, Derek continued as Wave’s SVP of Datacenter services. Before his tenure at Layer42 Networks, Derek held management positions at QTS Datacenters and AboveNet Communications through the acquisition of Sitesmith, a global managed services provider of which he was an early employee. Derek began his career as an engineer, serving in the role of network and data center provider ISI, later renamed Global Crossing via multiple acquisitions, as well as at network companies MFS Datanet and Cabletron Systems.