Is Infrastructure Sexy?
When you think about the need to have a solid core to build technology solutions on, infrastructure looks very sex. In this segment, we will focus on data centers as part of our overall infrastructure story in Nashville.
I am excited to report that what was weakness in the Nashville market last year is now a strength for us. Several of our existing data center providers have expanded their space and capacity. Data Centers are the hub of technology growth. With office space at premium, physical security concerns, and companies needing to squeeze every dime out of their budgets, server virtualization, the sourced data center becomes a viable option.
I spoke to a few of the local data center experts and received their take on how Nashville is positioned for future infrastructure needs.
“The most important change in Nashville, in recent years is the renewed commitment at Nexus and among some of our peers to anticipate, rather than react to the exponentially expanding needs of customers cost-reducing, security- and performance-enhancing infrastructure and services, said Frank Platt, VP Nexus Group. “Having learned from other firms’ problems, Nexus has been intensely focused on not becoming landlocked, in terms of power, space, and other fundamentals. We are also more committed than ever to ’sharpening our blades’, continually, in order to earn a leadership role in dealing with SaaS, the Cloud and a host of other fundamentals.”
In 2008, Peak 10 completed a second Nashville data center. This 45,000 square feet facility includes 10,000 of raised floor data center space, providing Peak 10 Nashville with more than 20,000 square feet of premiere data center space.
“Peak 10 made this investment in the Nashville market to accommodate the growth of our diverse customer base.” said Drew Fassett, Vice President and General Manager. The new facility provides Peak 10’s customers with additional room for growth and will be leveraged to help them meet regulatory compliance requirements.
Dolphini Networks, has been a tech leader in colocation and web hosting solutions in the Nashville area since opening their $35 Million dollar colocation space to the public. Dolphini hosts some of the most mission critical networks in the market today. Their clients include Emergency Ambulance Services for over 17 cities across the south, 14 Fire departments, several police departments, transportation networks, Emergency networks for the country of Costa Rica, HIPAA compliance live data for Hospitals, SOX compliance for the financial firms, and publicly held companies. Most people do not know that Dolphini is a strong, stable part of the Nashville Fiber Optic Infrastructure who has been a “carriers, carrier” for over 8 years now, by providing part of the core fiber infrastructure so other carriers may build and lease their networks. Dolphini has multiple carriers in their data center and more moving in from across the country that did not have the opportunity to move into the Nashville market just a couple of years ago. With Dolphini’s SAS 70 II qualifications being enhanced, this will help clear the way for additional service offerings.
Dolphini has over 15,000 square feet of remaining, secure data center space available. This is in addition to a 2,500 square foot room that can hold up to 64 cabinets for a single company direct access complete with fully managed services. “Dolphini is proud to offer a secure, advanced data center to our clients.” said Michael Krause, President and CEO of Dolphini. “We are able to save our clients a lot of financial stress due to IT overhead, data center expansion needs and IT staff by providing a cost effective, scalable and flexible colocation solution to fit their needs– not a boxed corporate idea of solutions.” Dolphini provides hosting for a single server, to multiple Private APC Infrastructure Cabinet Suites. We are blessed to be taking new clients on a daily basis and be a big part of support for advancing Nashville for being known as a technology city.”
TW Telecom is adding an average of 3 new building entries per month in Nashville and are fully funded by our Operating Income to continue to do that, even in this type of economy. The company is supportive of that growth by funding an expansion to Brentwood, increasing overall Nashville fiber connectivity this year and spending a significant amount of money to upgrade to their Collocation Facility for our Business Continuity/Disaster Recovery clients.
“The clientele of Nashville have become more technically astute, however, until recently, Nashville’s capacity and infrastructure has lagged far behind the demand, said Matt Warder, General Manager TW Telecom. “TWTC Nashville has made one of our objectives to bridge that gap in a very strategic and timely fashion.”
With data centers moving in the right direction, wireless will be the next topic of interest for Infrastructure in Nashville.
