Fidelity Plans Research Triangle Data Center

Fidelity Investments is scouting sites for a major data center in the Research Triangle region of North Carolina, and is said to be in talks to finalize a deal to build in Garner, a suburb of Raleigh, according to local media. The company is likely to invest at least $60 million in the new 100,000 square foot facility.

Officials in Garner confirm that they are aware of a data center project for a large company that currently has local operations. The Garner officials haven’t identified the prospect, but Fidelity has an existing data center in Research Triangle Park and acknowledges that it is seeking additional space. “Fidelity is planning for incremental growth beyond the capacity we have at our existing data center facility, and we are engaged in active negotiations that are progressing well,” Fidelity spokeswoman Jennifer Engle told the Triangle Business Journal. “We believe this is good news for North Carolina and reinforces our commitment to the state.”

T5 Targets North Carolina for Development

North Carolina has been a hot market for data center development in the past two years, as the combination of affordable power and aggressive tax incentives have lured major new projects from Google and Apple.

T5 Partners would like to help accelerate the trend. T5 is a data center development company led by former data center specialists with The Staubach Company. After years of performing data center site selection for enterprise clients like T-Mobile and E-Trade, the T5 team decided to focus on the other side of the business.

The company is now developing existing structures and sites that can be quickly converted into major data centers, and is focusing its initial efforts on marketing two properties near Charlotte for data center development.  

NC Wants Data Centers
“Choosing North Carolina first is no accident,” said Peter Marin, president of T5 Partners. “It’s based on the cost of power, incentives, low taxes and bringing the infrastructure together. The incentives are aggressive in North Carolina on purpose. They want to attract data centers.”

T5 doesn’t discuss its current clients, but the company is known to be working closely with officials in Catwaba County, where Apple is building a new $1 billion data center campus. State and local incentive packages are expected to result in about $46 million in rebates to Apple over the next 10 years.

The Apple-Google Corridor Looks to Expand

Economic development officials in western North Carolina, seeking to capitalize on big wins on projects for Google and Apple, are expanding their horizons and outreach to data center site selection specialists.

In August we noted the packaging of the region spanning Catawba and Caldwell counties as the “Apple-Google data center corridor.” This week the effort expanded to include economic development agencies in Burke, Alexander and Iredell counties.

Officials from the five counties joined together to host a Data Center Information Exchange Tuesday and Wednesday in Maiden, North Carolina near the construction site for Apple’s new $1 billion data center. The event attracted about 40 site selection specialists who help clients choose where to build data centers.

The collective marketing effort hopes to capitalize on the trend towards data center clustering, in which high-profile projects highlight an area’s attractiveness for data center development. In recent years this phenomenon has helped boost the fortunes of central Washington state and San Antonio, Texas, among other destinations.

EMC Buys Site for Research Triangle Data Center

Storage giant EMC Corp. recently announced an expansion of its cloud computing platform, adding a compute service to its cloud storage offering. Where will these cloud services live? EMC has bought a 450,000 square foot warehouse in Durham, North Carolina that it plans to convert into a data center and R&D facility.

Local media report that EMC Corp. has bought the Essex Center building in Durham from Crown Realty & Development of Irvine, Calif. Last month EMC announced a $280 million expansion plan in the Triangle over the next five years. The company said the new data center and research and development lab would totaling 260,000 square feet of space within the Essex building.

NetApp Unveils Green Data Center

The exterior of the new NetApp data center in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina.

Today NetApp (NTAP) is opening the doors to its new energy-efficient data center at its campus in Research Triangle Park (RTP), North Carolina. The new facility will enable NetApp to consolidate its engineering facilities into a global dynamic lab (GDL) and will house NetApp’s IT operations.

The 132,000 square foot facility houses a 36,000 square foot data center supporting 2,166 racks of IT equipment with a designed power load of nearly 25 megawatts.

Estimated PUE of 1.2
The NetApp data center was designed with numerous features to reduce the energy needed to power and cool those servers, which the company estimates will result in a Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) rating of 1.2.

The PUE metric (PDF) compares a facility’s total power usage to the amount of power used by the IT equipment, revealing how much is lost in distribution and conversion. A rating of 1.2 would place the NetApp facility among the most efficient data centers in the world, in roughly the same class as facilities operated by Google and Microsoft.   

Apple Moving Quickly on NC Project

Apple is known for keeping its new technology secret prior to launch. So it’s not surprising that the company has had little to say about its $1 billion data center project in North Carolina. The new iData Center may not get the fanfare of a MacWorld keynote when it launches, but one thing is clear: Apple plans to move quickly to the construction phase.

“It’s my understanding that they want to have bulldozers on-site in mid-August,” said Scott Millar, execurtive director of the Catawba County Economic Development Corp. “They’re moving ahead rapidly with permitting and acquiring the land, with the intent of hitting the ground running.”

That’s an ambitious schedule. The company announced its selection of North Carolina on June 3, and attended an event July 6 in Maiden, North Carolina to announce local incentives. The company has yet to acquire the land in Maiden, but Millar said he anticipates that should come together quickly. The Catawba EDC owns options on a 183-acre tract of land that comprises most of the site, and will be assigning those to Apple once the company acquires several adjacent plots that will also be included in the campus.

Roundup: Apple’s North Carolina Project

Apple’s $1 billion “iDataCenter” project continues to be the big economic development story in North Carolina. Apple plans to build a 500,000 square foot data center in the town of Maiden in Catawba County. Here’s the latest updates:

• Several reports have noted Apple’s refusal to confirm that Maiden will be the site for the new facility. That’s because the land is still being acquired. The Catawba County Economic Development Corp. has an option to purchase the 183-acre site off Route 321, according to executive director Scott Millar, who told the Charlotte Observer that the EDC plans buy the land at market value from its current owner and then sell it to Apple at the same price.
• North Carolina officials are hoping they can leverage the one-two punch of hosting huge data centers for the two hottest technology companies. Google has a large data center complex in Lenoir in Caldwell County. “Having Google and Apple here can absolutely put this region on the world map,” Caldwell County manager Bobby White told the Hickory Record. “I hope the two counties and the involved municipalities will be able to cooperate on some joint marketing ventures. It’s a great marketing tool.”
• The Observer looks at the pitched competition among between four North Carolina counties hoping to land the data center project, with a closer look at the aggressive incentives from Cleveland County.

How Apple Played The Incentive Game

How did Apple wind up with at least $43 million in state-level tax breaks and another $20 million in county and municipal incentives to built its new data center in Maiden, North Carolina? It knew how to play the incentives game and pit rival states against one another to extract the best possible economic scenario for its estimated $1 billion project.

When a large company looks for a site for a major data center, it’s almost always a multi-state process. Issues like power costs, the suitability of a site for using free cooling and the availability of recycled water have been major site location factors in recent data center decisions.

But nowadays, the decision often boils down to tax incentives. Want to see a local politician spring into action? Tell them that the billion-dollar project that was about to make them a local hero will instead be headed to the state next door. Unless, of course, the official can arrange for a favorable tax situation that can tip the balance in their favor.

This process goes on all the time, yet we rarely see it in action. But the exception is the state of North Carolina’s courtship of Apple. The state recently released e-mails revealing how the state responded to a competitive threat for neighboring Virginia with a speedy tax break that won the Apple deal.

Apple: Maiden iDataCenter Will be 500,000SF

Apple Inc. today said that it plans to locate its new $1 billion data center in Maiden, North Carolina, confirming our June 29 story on the site of the $1 billion project. The real news emerging from today’s meetings in Maiden to announces the deal: Apple is planning a 500,000 square foot facility, according to the Catawba County Economic Development Corp..

The new North Carolina facility will be nearly five times the size of the 109,000 square foot Newark, Calif. data center Apple bought in 2006 to support its growing infrastructure. Apple also operates a data center on its Cupertino, Calif. campus, and has used content delivery networks from Akamai (AKAM) and Limelight Networks (LLNW) to distribute content to its users around the globe

The new site is slated to be built on a 255-acre site in Maiden, bringing 50 full-time jobs and 250 temporary construction jobs to a an area that has been hard hit by the economic downturn. Catawba County has an unemployment rate of 15.5 percent. The Catawba EDC web site has already posted links for local suppliers and prospective employees to contact Apple.