Iron Mountain® Incorporated has begun construction on its first regional data center in Northborough, MA. The news comes just five months after the company’s entry into the multi-tenant data center market, when it began leasing wholesale and retail colocation data center space in its premier underground facility in western Pennsylvania.
Set to open its doors in early 2014, Iron Mountain’s Boston Data Center will feature a Tier III-certified design and construction and offer the region’s only LEED® Gold certified facility providing a resilient and energy-efficient environment. The new data center will add to an existing campus of records storage centers the company maintains in Northborough, a central location for businesses in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, eastern Connecticut, southern New Hampshire, and Maine.
The company expects highly regulated organizations will find the site an attractive option for meeting stringent industry requirements on the storage and management of information. Complementing the secure data center facility, Iron Mountain will offer comprehensive services for the careful management of data assets, including migration, networking, tape handling, IT asset tracking, disposition and more.
“Home to many highly-regulated organizations, the greater Boston area is underserved in terms of access to area data centers capable of meeting their unique needs,” said Mark Kidd, Iron Mountain senior vice president and general manager, data centers. “With security and compliance at the core of Iron Mountain’s operations, those highly-regulated industries like healthcare, biotech and financial services can now choose a better-suited option for their data center operations.”
Kelly Morgan, a research manager for 451 Research, speaks to the market need, “We believe that new data center facilities meeting HIPAA and PCI-DSS requirements as well as achieving Uptime Institute certification for Tier III design and construction will see strong demand. In addition to offering a level of security and compliance expertise that other colocation providers will find hard to match, Iron Mountain has created a data center co-location facility that is within a drivable distance for many of the Northeast region’s healthcare and financial services companies. This provides an added level of comfort as they evaluate their options for outsourcing data center operations.”
Iron Mountain will work with Compass Datacenters to design and build Iron Mountain’s Boston Data Center, consisting of three data halls. Each data hall provides:
- 10,000 sq ft of space with a three-foot-high raised floor to provide flexible layout and design
- Support for 1.2 MW of critical IT load and cool densities up to 20 kW per rack without containment
- “2N” Uninterruptable Power Supply (UPS) architecture, multiple 2 MW generators and N+1 mechanical system to deliver the enhanced reliability of a concurrently maintainable Tier III certified design
- Miami-Dade County standards, built to withstand winds up to 149 mph and meet a 1.5 seismic rating
- Redundant fiber entrance facilities to offer no single point of failure for network services
“Compass Datacenters’ innovative designs and construction methodology enables us to build natural disaster-resistant, dedicated data centers quickly and with great precision,” said Chris Crosby, CEO of Compass Datacenters. “With more than 20 years of experience, our team can design and build Iron Mountain’s Boston Data Center so it can be fully operational within six months.”
Kidd concurred, adding: “Known as one of the most experienced teams for data center design and builds, Compass Datacenters also provides Iron Mountain with a capital efficient approach to developing a data center footprint.”
On Apr. 30 of this year, Iron Mountain announced its entry into the multi-tenant data center market, making available wholesale data center and retail colocation options within the company’s western Pennsylvania Underground. Iron Mountain also announced its intent to explore additional locations for regional data centers.
