Park Place Technologies CEO Chris Adams Powers Cleveland's $1.2 Billion Data Center Maintenance Business

 Chris Adams stands in the middle of a warehouse, looking at rows of server racks filled with hardware from IBM, Dell and Hewlett-Packard.

“It’s almost like a museum of computer equipment because we have to have everything going back years,” Adams says. “We’ve got stuff that could be 10, 20 years old in here.”

This obviously isn’t a typical museum. It’s quality assurance.

“We’re just trying to break them,” Adams says. 

Adams is president and CEO of Park Place Technologies, which specializes in third-party data center technical support for hospitals, banks and businesses. The machines in the “museum” at its Highland Heights global headquarters are being tested to see they work properly and, if not, to teach engineers how to fix them.

What started as a small tech shop in Chagrin Falls has grown into  more than 3,000 employees in 330,000 square feet over two former Progressive buildings. The company serves 26,000 customers, including half of the Fortune 500, operates in 180 countries. Last year, it pulled in $1.2 billion in revenue.

“They are one of what we call our tech unicorns,” says Baiju Shah, president and CEO of Greater Cleveland Partnership. “It’s been on a rapid growth path, and that’s being driven by obviously great leadership, but it’s also investors that have been fueling the support that’s required to enable them to both organically grow, as well as grow through acquisitions.” 

The private equity firm Warburg Pincus acquired a majority stake in Park Place Tech late last year, acquiring it with a company already in its portfolio, Service Express. 

Adams has set his sights on growing a “healthy 8% to 10% a year, indefinitely.”  

“They want to become one of the country’s, if not the world’s, largest data center maintenance companies,” Shah says. 

But it’s not the kind of company that gets a lot of name recognition.

“In Cleveland, people ask if we’re the parking company at the airport,” Adams says. “We get that a lot.”

You’re more likely to recognize its clients, which include KeyBank, University Hospitals, Eaton and Steris, to name a few. Basically, anything that has a data center is a potential customer.

Those data centers can contain tens of thousands of servers originally purchased from companies such as Dell, EMC, HP or Cisco. They typically come with warranties that last about three to five years. After that, the client can either return to the manufacturer for maintenance or find third-party tech support. 

That’s where Park Place Tech comes in, like an auto repair shop after your car’s warranty expires — except for tech, and they come to you.

Park Place Technologies started as Park Place International in 1991. The brainchild of Daniel Grajzl and John Warcaba, it initially sold refurbished computer equipment, primarily Data General, an early minicomputer maker. The first office was just 500 square feet in a Chagrin Falls building called Park Place. They thought sounded “high end” and used it as inspiration for the company’s name. 

The company grew steadily, adding employees and moving to bigger offices with warehouses. After a decade of business, the owners decided to diversify. They hired engineers and started servicing computers and providing tech support. That turned out to be an “endless market,” Warcaba says.

“Dan and I, the biggest pleasure we got was to see how people’s lives changed,” Warcaba says. “How they could go buy a house, or a bigger house, or somewhere they’ve always wanted to live, sending their kids to whatever high school or college. They just seemed so appreciative, and that was such a good feeling. They were proud of the company.”

After rebranding to Park Place Technologies, the company made its first acquisition in 2004, taking over Technical & Logistical Consulting. Warcaba says the vice president of service operations at the Massachusetts-based company, Ed Kenty, quickly caught their eye as a talented guy with a lot of “great connections in the industry.” Park Place made Kenty president and CEO later that year. Kenty brought Adams on as his chief financial officer in 2006.

Not long after that, a rival company approached Park Place, hoping to acquire it. Those meetings “didn’t develop very well,” as Warcaba put it. The deal fell through, but it was a formative experience for Adams. It turns out he much prefers being the one who does the acquiring. He quickly set up a mergers and acquisitions team.

“We ended up buying that company, by the way,” he says.

Adams self-identifies as “extremely competitive,” so it’s no surprise acquisitions have sped up considerably during his tenure. Before he joined the company, Park Place Tech had acquired one other company. Since setting up the mergers and acquisitions team, it’s sealed the deal on close to 40 acquisitions.

“We had a healthy business, and then we built this great engine to go acquire other companies, and our team just was amazing at it,” he says. “They’ve done and, still to this day, do a fantastic job.”

Adams went on to become president in 2016 and CEO in 2019, and the mergers and acquisitions team has grown to 30 people, constantly on the lookout for other companies to add to the Park Place portfolio.

An acquisition is generally good news for the company that’s growing, but for the employees working of a company that gets bought out, it can be a stressful experience. 

“It’s a little bit of a scary moment,” says Akeshia LaRose, the director of the program management office at Park Place Tech. 

LaRose worked for Curvature, which was acquired by Park Place in 2020. She was nervous about the deal at first, but says the level of communication early on from Park Place Tech executives impressed her. Executives were clear about where the company stood and how they hoped to grow. They also set up meet-and-greets with new employees, not to grill them, but to get to know them. They created a new position for her with her input.

“Immediately at Park Place, everybody’s like, ‘We’re truly one team. We’re here to help,’” she says. 

The new corporate overlords also came with new perks. 

“Sometimes it’s so much, it’s almost hard to keep up with, but it’s even little things like discounts for your pet insurance,” LaRose says. Adams says he believes in reinvesting in employees, because that’s how the company will grow. 

There isn’t much reason to leave the company’s $90 million headquarters. The campus features on-site child care, a cafeteria for lunch and a gym for working out. A studio hosts yoga classes, and a salon has pop-ins from hairstylists and nail techs. Employees can schedule on-site dental appointments, mammograms and physical therapy. There are pickleball courts and basketball hoops outside and Ping-Pong tables and a miniature golf course inside.

“If you walk our campus, you can see where we’ve made investments and things that create a better environment for the employees culturally,” Adams says. “Pickleball is huge, because your head’s down working all day, but you go out there and play for an hour and come back excited. You’re in a good mood. You feel good about working. You’re happy to be here.”

If you’re into pickleball, this is the company for you. Not only does it have pickleball courts, but it is also the official “technology partner” for two professional leagues. To really drive its love of pickleball home, there are three giant pickleballs under the main stairs in the lobby of the headquarters and pickleball prints covering the walls up to the sales floor.

The perks extend off campus, too. The company covers employees’ health savings accounts, dental and vision. It also has the “President’s Club” for the top 10% of employees. They get an award and a free trip. This year, the company was at the Atlantis resort in the Bahamas, and next, it is headed to the Four Seasons at Walt Disney World. 

Adams regularly polls employees on what they would like more of in the workplace. Recently, employees asked for standing desks, so everyone got standing desks. 

“I’d say 5% of the people use them, but they all wanted them,” Adams says. “I look at it, and I laugh.”

There is a “Park Place type.” John DiMattio, the director of enterprise sales, was the first of a particular group of employees that Adams likes to hire, especially for the sales department: Division III athletes. 

“They just have grit,” Adams says. “It’s the ability to keep getting up when you get knocked down.”

DiMattio played football and studied finance at Baldwin Wallace University, and landed at Park Place Tech as an intern in 2008, then was hired onto the sales team. 

Park Place started out as a computer parts reseller, then shifted into the third-party data center technical support space. Now, it also manages software networks, sells used hardware, runs and even moves entire data centers for clients. Its latest venture is into the world of artificial intelligence, where it is focused on liquid cooling systems for graphics processing units.

“It’s remarkable, computers in general, but AI in particular, how small the actual chip that does the work is, versus how large the structure around it is to keep it functioning and cool,” Adams says. 

Computer chips, and AI chips in particular, need to be kept cool to function properly. Traditional air cooling technology requires immense amounts of energy and can be incredibly loud. Turning on the air cooling at the Park Place Tech warehouse feels like standing behind a jet engine. 

In recent years, attention has turned to liquid cooling because it is significantly more efficient, requiring an estimated 30% to 40% less energy than traditional cooling systems. 

A few years ago, Park Place Tech partnered with Lubrizol on its proprietary liquid immersion cooling system, CompuZol, to install and maintain liquid cooling systems for its clients. 

It also continues to experiment with new cooling technologies. Just next to the “computer museum” warehouse is the AI cooling “lab.” This room has several large containers that look like tubs with lids with liquid cooling solution inside. Next to them are several vertical cooling racks that resemble bookshelves with doors. These house dual-phase (liquid and gas) technologies. This is where engineers can experiment with and learn to use various cooling techniques. 

“I had to peel money out of profits to do that,” Adams says. “I’ve got to invest in our future. If I don’t, someday we’re going to hit a brick wall.”

So will Park Place Tech eventually join the list of burgeoning businesses that launched in Northeast Ohio only to move to sunnier destinations, bigger cities or friendlier tax codes?

“We’re staying,” he says. “We get all the talent we need here. I don’t see a reason that we would need to go. I have no interest in that. It never even crossed my mind.”

The only way Park Place Tech would leave, he says, is if another company bought it. 

“If we perform, we manage our future. We hold our destiny,” he says, and that destiny is right here in Northeast Ohio.  

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