Keep your friends close and your enemies closer could be the game plan that Digital Realty is currently following.

The global data center, colocation, and interconnection solutions provider today announced the appointment of Corey Dyer as executive vice president for global sales and marketing – having most recently worked at global data center, colocation, and interconnection solutions provider (see the theme here) Equinix, one of Digital Realty's key competitors.

Dyer will be tasked with directing Digital Realty's sales, leasing and marketing efforts across the organisation and will report directly to chief executive officer A. William Stein, who is ‘delighted' to be welcoming Dyer to the Digital Realty team.

"Corey brings over 25 years of relevant experience, and he is an established technology sales leader with an exceptional track record of building and driving sales and marketing operations at leading technology companies,” says Stein.

“His colocation sales leadership expertise and extensive experience successfully targeting the enterprise customer segment make him an ideal addition to our team as we continue to broaden our reach and power our customers' digital ambitions around the world."

As aforementioned, Dyer comes to Digital Realty from Equinix, where he held the role of Americas senior vice president of sales where he had responsibility for all sales across the whole Americas region. Prior to this, Dyer worked at Hewlett-Packard where he served as vice president of storage sales for Canada, and led HP's Canadian storage business.

Dyer built the foundations of his career on 15 years with Dell where he held various sales positions primarily in the server, software, and peripheral businesses.

It's certainly been a busy last few months for Digital Realty, with the company coming forward with a number of important announcements.

In September the company announced two major appointments with Edward Diver coming from Blue Shield to take on the position as chief information officer, and Michael Montoya coming from Microsoft to take on the role of chief information security officer.

Also in September, Digital Realty announced that it had entered into a definitive agreement worth US$1.8 billion to acquire Ascenty, a data center provider in Brazil. This effectively stripped the title of operating the most colocation facilities in South America from Equinix.

In October the company announced the opening of its new ‘Global Operations Command Center' in New Jersey, a facility it asserts is equipped to optimize its customer experience by providing stability and rapid response capabilities for customers around the world.

And then finally just last month Digital Realty announced two further appointments, with Gregory Wright from Americas Real Estate and the Real Estate, Gaming - Lodging Group at Bank of America Merrill Lynch joining Digital Realty as chief investment officer, while Mark Smith came to Digital Realty from Zettagrid to take on the role of APAC managing director.

Dyer will be starting with Digital Realty on 7 January 2019.