Caisson Data Center Services has announced that co-founder Karl Robohm will serve as the company’s Chief Operating Officer. In this role, Robohm is leading the design and development of Caisson’s 120,000-sq-ft Tier III colocation facility in Natick, Massachusetts. Phase I will be 16,500 sq. ft. of concurrently maintainable data center space and is expected to come online in Q4 of 2011.

Robohm is an expert in designing, developing and managing the operations of mission critical data centers, both at Internap Network Services as well as through his consulting work with enterprises at Transitional Data Services. Karl has directed and coordinated large efforts throughout his 25+ year career in data center site selection, facility design / build, data center efficiency and operations.

“I’ve seen first hand the need for Tier III space in the Boston area,” said Karl Robohm, co-founder and COO, Caisson Data Center Services. “Because of the lack of usable Tier III inventory in the region, IT leaders I’ve worked with over the last few years are frustrated that they’ve had to settle for less or leave the area to meet their critical criteria. I’m excited to bring this brand new, highly efficient data center online in Natick.”

David Steigerwald, CEO of Caisson Data Center Services, agrees with the large market opportunity for data center services in the region. Steigerwald said, “Boston’s financial services, technology and bio/pharmaceutical organizations are managing escalating IT infrastructure needs – higher power density computing environments, virtualization and private clouds. Karl has designed this facility and our processes to handle this new wave of infrastructure demands. Our Natick facility presents an attractive option for businesses in Massachusetts to fulfill space, power, cooling, bandwidth and uptime requirements while keeping their servers within reach for management purposes.”

Previously, Robohm served as vice president of Critical Infrastructure at Transitional Data Services where he helped corporations optimize and prepare for data center relocations. Prior to joining TDS, he was director of Data Center Operations at Internap Network Service, where he was directly responsible for the day-to-day operations and budget for 500,000+ sq. ft. of data center facilities nationwide.

Robohm is one of just 50 professionals in the country to hold the highest level Data Center Energy Practitioner (DCEP) Program certification, developed in a partnership between industry and the U.S. Department of Energy to accelerate energy savings in data centers.