US data center provider Vantage Data Centers announced completion of another 1.5MW of data center capacity at its massive Santa Clara campus and the appointment of Greg Vernon, former CEO of Rare Space Technology, to lead its sales and marketing effort.

This is the second major leadership change to take place at Vantage recently. In July, Silver Lake Partners' Sureel Choksi stepped in to replace the company's founder Jim Trout in the CEO seat.

Vantage gets its financial backing from Silver Lake.

“We are very pleased to welcome Greg Vernon as SVP, sales and marketing,” Choksi said. “Greg brings a wealth of sales management experience and customer relationships that will serve Vantage well as we accelerate the company’s sales and marketing investment.”

Prior to Rare Space, Vernon served as VP of sales at ViaWest, another US data center colocation company, as well as VP of sales at WiredRE, a data center-focused real estate advisory firm. All in all, Vernon's experience in data center sales and management amounts to about13 years, according to Vantage's news release.

Vernon replaces Jeff Kane, who will move on to a new role in which he will be responsible for “certain strategic accounts”

“I am looking forward to working with Vantage and its customers to build upon Vantage’s reputation for delivering an exceptional customer experience,” Vernon said. “Vantage has the most scalable, energy-efficient data center campus in Silicon Valley, and I am honored to join a company that puts customer needs first.”

The new 1.5MW of capacity is in the V1 building of Vantage's three-building Silicon Valley campus. Prior to Vantage's acquisition of the property and the company's founding in 2009, the campus was occupied by Intel Corp.

The power capacity is for about 9,000 sq ft of raised-floor space that has been added to the building.

“We are pleased with our continued growth in Santa Clara”, Choksi said. “For Vantage, this project marks the completion of 25MW of critical IT load at the Santa Clara campus.

“With over 20MW of additional expansion capacity available on campus, Vantage is poised for continued growth.”

The company has another large data center campus in Quincy, Washington.