September turned out to be a big month for big data center construction project announcements in the US. Facebook has finally decided to build in New Mexico, SAP is stepping into Colorado Springs in a big way, and data center providers Data Foundry and TierPoint are expanding their empires in Texas.
Here are the details:
New Mexico Scores $250M Facebook Data Center Build
After a tax-break war with the State of Utah, New Mexico has secured a commitment from Facebook to build its next data center in the Village of Los Lunas.
The first phase of construction, expected to start later this year, will produce a 510,000-square foot facility and cost about $250 million, according to a joint statement by Facebook and the office of New Mexico Governor Suzana Martinez. Facebook is likely to continue expanding in this location in the future as it does in its other data center locations.
The company has selected Fortis Construction as the general contractor for the project. Fortis also built Facebook’s first company-owned and operated data center, located in Prineville, Oregon.
Facebook expects to start serving traffic from Los Lunas starting in October 2018.
Read more: Everything You Wanted to Know About Facebook Data Centers
SAP Building Huge in Colorado Springs
SAP America, US subsidiary of the German enterprise software giant SAP SE, has selected Colorado Springs as the location of two massive-scale future data centers.
The company recently bought two plots of land – one on the northern side of town and the other on its southern side – for $3 million each, Colorado Springs Gazette reported. The north-side plot neighbors data centers by Progressive Insurance, FedEx, and Walmart.
First phase of the data center build in the north will provide about 41,000 square feet and room to add another 60,000 square feet in the future, according to planning documents reviewed by The Gazette. The project in the south is similar in scope.
In an interview, an SAP official told the newspaper that Colorado Springs was attractive to the company because of its efficient power supply, favorable climate, and availability of a quality workforce.
Data Foundry to Kick Off $200M Build in Austin
Data Foundry is preparing to break ground on the third data center in Austin, which is where the company is based. The future facility, called Texas 2, will go up on the company’s data center campus called Data Ranch, home to its Texas 1 data center.
It expects to have invested about $200 million by the time all three planned construction phases are complete, ultimately delivering 165,000 square feet of raised floor in a 325,000-square foot facility.
Phase One, due to start this this quarter, will “tentatively” launch in the third quarter of 2017, Data Foundry said in a statement.
While there are other types of data centers in the Austin market, it is an especially desirable location for disaster recovery facilities, according to the data center provider. That’s primarily because the area rarely sees natural disasters and has its own power grid, independent from US national grid.
Compass to Build TierPoint’s 40th Data Center in Dallas
TierPoint, the company that started six years ago as Colo4Dallas, a local service provider in Dallas with a single data center, announced a plan for its 40th facility – a 90,000-square foot data center in Allen, Texas.
The site’s first phase will provide 16,000 square feet of raised floor and cost about $20 million, the company said. Dallas-based Compass Datacenters will build the facility for TierPoint.
Located about 25 miles north of Dallas, Allen is a high-tech community with easy access from pretty much anywhere in North Texas, according to TierPoint. The facility will serve as a good disaster-recovery option for its current customers as well as a place to expand IT infrastructure capacity, the company said.
Read more: How TierPoint Quietly Built a Data Center Empire in Secondary Markets
