The Data Center As Rock Star

Savvis (SVVS) is planning to introduce its new data centers with a splash this fall. Armed with $125 million from the sale of its content delivery network (CDN) earlier this year, Savvis is building out four new data center sites to support its utility computing services. To kick things off, the company has planned a four-city Data Center Expansion Tour, with events scheduled for Atlanta, Piscataway, N.J. (Oct. 11), Santa Clara, Calif. (Oct. 18) and Sterling, Va. (Oct. 23). The new centers will add 180,000 square feet of space to the company’s data center capacity.

Savvis is giving the tour a rock concert feel in its marketing, which features silhouetted crowds waving their hands in the air, along with a grunge band font. And on lead guitar … it’s Nicholas Carr! The author and Rough Type blogger will provide the data center tour equivalent of a wild solo with a sneak peek at his soon to be released book, “The Big Switch: Our New Digital Destiny.” You can register for one of the tours on the Savvis web site.

Joking aside, Savvis’ approach to marketing these new sites capitalizes on the growing interest in the data center as the platform driving Web 2.0 and software as a service (SaaS). This is not your Dad’s data center tour. Data centers are a lot sexier nowadays, and providers can take advantage of this fact with facility tours that showcase these huge infrastructure investments for their customers.

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About Rich Miller

Rich Miller is the founder and editor-in-chief of Data Center Knowledge, and has been reporting on the data center sector since 2000. He has tracked the growing impact of high-density computing on the power and cooling of data centers, and the resulting push for improved energy efficiency in these facilities.