Level 3 Communications, Inc. has announced that it is has enhanced its global data center capabilities with the deployment of a new enterprise-grade data center facility located in the Scott Data Center complex, Omaha, NE. The Level 3 facility offers enterprises and government agencies a state-of-the-art infrastructure designed to support the power, redundancy, cooling, and security requirements of today's IT applications. Premier Elite facilities are designed to support IT solutions with on-site staff to support site access and monitoring.
According to estimates by 451 Research, the overall multi-tenant data center market globally, valued in 2011 at $15.8 billion, is projected to grow at 19.2 percent CAGR through 2013. Level 3 selected the Scott Data Center in Omaha as the location for its new, advanced data center facility to address increasing demand for facilities designed to support higher density application servers and storage environments.
"Enterprises and government agencies increasingly demand protection for critical data and applications to ensure their ability to maintain the continuity of their business operations and avoid any potential disruption," said Mike Benjamin, Level 3's vice president of data center product management. "In today's environment, customers need more redundancy, power and cooling systems; however, achieving this top-tier reliability can be cost prohibitive for many organizations. With this new facility, we can offer customers all of these benefits while minimizing the financial burden of owning and maintaining their own facility."
In a study by SustainableCircles Corporation, an investment research company, Omaha was ranked among U.S. cities as one of the lowest for natural disaster risk. Additionally, Omaha benefits from some of the lowest power costs in the U.S., which was a key consideration given the substantial power requirements of advanced data centers, and will provide a more economical destination for data center consolidation. This data center is an excellent alternative, or complement, to West Coast or East Coast outsourcing strategies.
Enterprise-grade data centers are designed to host critical services for enterprises and government agencies. Level 3's new mid-west data center is housed in a Tier III certified facility as rated by The Uptime Institute, a third-party data center research, education, and consulting organization focused on improving data center performance and efficiency. Tier III facilities provide the redundant power and environmental features necessary to ensure critical business applications perform reliably and predictably. In addition, the data center provides direct connectivity to Level 3's advanced, global IP network, and offers carrier-neutral interconnections to improve transport efficiency. The data center includes power and environmental redundancy, 24 x 7 alarm monitoring, closed-circuit video surveillance, and multi-tiered secure access. It is also scheduled to be PCI and SSAE16 certified, complying with financial industry transactional standards.
Level 3, a multi-tenant data center provider, operates more than 350 data center facilities in North America, Europe and Latin America. These facilities can offer any of three levels of service, ranging from Premier Select facilities designed to host traditional network equipment to Premier Elite facilities, such as Level 3's new Omaha data center facility. Additionally, all of Level 3's data centers are directly connected to its global network, providing low-latency access to corporate assets all around the globe. Connectivity among sites is available via Level 3's 165,000 intercity, metro, and subsea fiber route miles.
