Center 7 Acquires Colo Provider Tier Four

In a deal combining Utah colocation providers, Center 7 Inc. has acquired Tier Four, the companies said today. Center 7 is also changing its name to C7 Data Centers Inc.

C7 has four data centers, including a new 10,500 square foot data center in Lindon, Utah. The deal adds facilities operated by Tier Four in Orem and Salt Lake City. C7 has plans to open additional green data center facilities in the south portion of Salt Lake County and northern Utah.

“Our new company name—C7 Data Centers—accompanied by corporate re-branding will better represent the company, its success, growth, and goals,” said Nathan Hatch, President and CEO of C7.

Core NAP: Another Local Data Center Story

We’ve highlighted a number of success stories featuring local data center companies that focus on regional business markets outside the major Internet hubs. Another of these companies, Core NAP, is featured this morning in the Austin American Statesman.  The story discusses “little guy data centers” building niches in local markets.

There’s an interesting wrinkle in the Core NAP story: Founders Kenneth Smith and Frank Bieser founded a company called Jump.net, sold it to Allegiance Telecom in 2000, and then bought the data center back in 2002 when Allegiance began selling assets. Core NAP has an 11,000 square foot facility.

Small Markets Yearn for Big Data Centers

The map of the data center world is being redrawn in surprising ways. When I first began writing about data centers in 2000, the industry was focused on buildings in fiber-rich connectivity hubs, and most conversations with economic development officials included a “Data Centers 101″ explanation of these facilities.

Times have certainly changed. Last week I attended the Mid-America Economic Development Council’s annual “competitiveness conference” in Chicago, and spoke with a room full of officials from the Midwest who are keenly interested in attracting data center projects.

I met economic development officials from modest towns in Nebraska, Iowa and the Dakotas that were well-briefed on the industry and arrived with a mandate from their governor or mayor to compete hard for data center projects.

The booming interest in the region is driven primarily by recent decisions by the three largest Internet companies to locate major projects in the region, with Google and Microsoft choosing locations in Iowa while Yahoo has set up shop in Nebraska.

Prairie Bunkers Seen for Nebraska Ammo Sites

Prairie Bunkers LLC hopes to convert World War II ammo bunkers in Nebraska (pictured above, with artist visualization) into a series of 5,000 square foot data centers.

A Nebraska company is planning to convert World War II ammunition bunkers into data centers, hoping to capitalize on interest in ultra-secure data storage and the Midwest’s recent gains as a destination for mission-critical sites.

Prairie Bunkers LLC will unveil its project tomorrow in Hastings, Nebraska, with  Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman  scheduled to be on hand. The project features 184 World War II naval ammunition storage bunkers, which Prairie Bunkers is offering to customers for conversion into ultra-secure high-density data centers.

The bunkers were part of the Naval Ammunition Depot built to manufacture and store munitions during World War II. Each 5,000 square foot bunker has concrete walls and is bermed with earth on three sides.

Deal Combines San Diego Data Center Firms

American Internet Services (AIS) announced today that it has acquired Complex Drive in a deal that combines two leading data center providers in the San Diego, Calif. market. AIS has three facilities with 105,000 square feet of data center space in the San Diego area, while Complex Drive has two facilities with 20,000 square feet of space. AIS was recently acquired by Seaport Capital, which has also been a major investor in Switch and Data (SDXC) and Peak 10.

Complex Drive will become a “seamless part” of the AIS operation with no changes made to either company’s existing staff or management team, said Alessandra Carrasco, CEO of AIS.

Nationwide Data Center Planned for Ohio

Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co. is making plans to build a $96 million data center in New Albany, Ohio, according to local media reports. The insurance company is planning a data center facility of at least 120,000 square feet on 45 acres recently designated as New Albany’s Research and Information District. Construction is scheduled to begin in January 2010 and wrap up by December 2011, according to city officials.

Perhaps the most interesting facet of the announcement has been the tangible benefits for the local community. Economic development agencies in many areas have been seeking to attract data center projects, which typically involve massive investment but few full-time jobs, which traditionally have been the key benchmark for new projects.

Flurry of New Data Center Projects

There’s been a flurry of announcements in the past week about new data center projects and expansions in ”second-tier” markets around the country. As we’ve noted before, the demand for data center space extends well beyond the core Internet connectivity hubs. Here’s a roundup:  

• DataChambers is expanding its data center space inside its hardened underground facility in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, the company said this week. DataChambers will expand its footprint within its Salem Business Park facility, which is 18 feet underground and previously used as a design and fabrication site for nuclear missile guidance systems. This is the second major expansion initiative for DataChambers this year. In March the company opened an 85,000-square-foot facility at Ridge Creek Business Park in Charlotte.
• Reynolds and Reynolds will build a $23.8 million data center on its Kettering, Ohio campus with the help of a property tax abatement officials say helped prevent the company from building the facility in Texas. The company will save $430,000 in property taxes over the five-year life of the 25 percent property tax abatement, city officials said.

Iowa Wants Even More Data Centers

Google and Microsoft have decided to invest more than $1 billion in building giant data center campuses in Iowa. Apparently that’s not enough for Iowa officials, who are continuing to pursue more huge “server farms,” according to the Des Moines Register. The question is this: after you’ve landed Microsoft and Google, how many more data center projects do you need?

The same factors that make Iowa attractive to the technology industry’s largest companies also make it ideal for single-tenant enterprise data centers, according to John Boyd of The Boyd Group, who has done several major studies of the cost of operating data centers in different regional markets around the United States. Iowa has fared extremely well in Boyd’s surveys, with Council Bluffs, Ames and Des Moines all ranking among the lowest-cost locations, with annual operating costs of between $12 million and $12.4 million.

Data centers are highly-automated operations that typically don’t come with a large number of jobs attached. Google says its $600 million Council Bluffs data center will create 200 jobs. Some industry observers have questioned this number, noting that competitors like Microsoft and Yahoo operate their facilities with between 30 and 50 employees. Microsoft recently indicated it will build a major data center in Iowa as well.

DBSi Plans Data Center in Wall Street West

Disaster recovery specialist Data Based Systems International, Inc. (DBSi) is building a 228,600 square foot data center in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley as part of the state’s Wall Street West initiative, the company said Friday. DBSi has begun work on its Advanced Technology Center (ATC) on the TEK Park campus in Breinigsville, Pa. and hopes to complete the facility late this year.

TEK Park is a seven-building complex that was originally developed by AT&T Bell Labs as a research center. The MRA Group bought the property from TriQuint Semiconductor in 2005 for $9.3 million. TriQuint inherited the property in 2003 when it bought a division of Agere Systems, a Bell Labs spinoff.

“The addition of TEK Park further enables DBSi to provide the greater New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia, and Central Pennsylvania corporate markets with secure hosting and disaster recovery services outside of the metro threat zones,” said William Bachenberg, CEO of DBSi. “The existing power infrastructure at TEK Park will allow the facility to support very high density deployments of blade servers and other technologies.