i/o Data Centers ("i/o") today announced that it has been awarded The Uptime Institute's Tier III Certification for Design Documents for the first phase of the Company's Phoenix data center. This data center is the largest commercially available data center in the United States to achieve Tier III design certification from the Uptime Institute.

In making the announcement, George D. Slessman, CEO of i/o, said that "Although many data center service providers aspire to or even claim Tier Certification, i/o has achieved this rigorous technical standard."

The Uptime Institute is the only firm that is licensed to rate and certify topology against The Uptime Institute's Tier Classification System. Tier Certification of Design Documents ensures that the site infrastructure solutions, as represented in the design documents, are consistent with the Tier requirements of The Uptime Institute standard.

In confirming the announcement, Pitt Turner, executive director and senior tier certification authority with The Uptime Institute, stated, "Tier III Design Certification signifies a design solution that is capable of responding to a 24 x 7 performance objective-without shutdowns for equipment work or replacement. Furthermore, i/o's achievement of such a high performance capability over such a scale is impressive."

i/o, the leading provider of data centers as a service (DCaaS), recently announced that it raised $200,000,000 in two integrated financings, fully funding its plan to add 35 MW of data center capacity within the next 12 months.