OneNeck® IT Solutions announces the availability of its newly expanded data center space in Eden Prairie, MN. The $12 million construction project added about 6,000 sq ft raised floor to the Certified Tier III data center which is located in one of the fastest growing business marketplaces in the Twin Cities metro area.
“We are excited about now being able to offer more enterprise-ready, mission-critical data center space to businesses throughout the metro area and entire Midwest,” said Phil LaForge, president and CEO of OneNeck. “Our customers are growing and we need to keep pace with their needs so they can continue to be successful.”
The entire building — about 18,000 sq ft of total raised floor space — continues to emphasize reliability and security. Biometric security functionality has been added. Similar to other OneNeck data centers, this facility is also built to be fail-safe and support complex compliance requirements facing businesses today, such as SSAE 16, PCI-DSS, and HIPAA.
“In addition, our data center in Eden Prairie is one of the largest commercially available Uptime Institute Design Certified Tier III multi-tenant data centers in the Upper Midwest,” states LaForge. “Customers, and potential customers, now have the space they need for future growth along with a safe, secure place to store their data and critical IT infrastructure.”
Tier III certification signifies a concurrently maintainable infrastructure is employed such that if any one critical component is removed through planned maintenance or component failure, mission critical services will not be interrupted.
Eden Prairie is home to one of six OneNeck data centers located across the United States. A seventh data center is currently under construction in the Denver area. These projects are part of OneNeck’s strategy to provide local, yet highly secure and extremely reliable, Tier 3 or better data center space for business owners who prefer to be close to their IT infrastructure.
"For nearby customers, their next visit to our data center should also prove to be more pleasing and efficient,” said Hank Koch, vice president of Mission Critical Facilities at OneNeck. “Shipping, receiving, and storage areas have been improved, building navigation is easier, the facility command center has been enlarged, and the entire entrance along with meeting room areas have been updated."
OneNeck Breaks Ground on Tier 3 Data Center in Metro Denver
OneNeck® IT Solutions has announced preparations are nearly complete and construction will soon be underway on its new $20 million, 35,000 square foot Tier 3+ data center in the Denver metro area. The data center will be being built on 11.2 acres of land on Concord Center Drive in Englewood. Once open, in early 2015, it will be the seventh data center owned and operated by OneNeck in the U.S.
“We are excited to make this additional investment in the Denver area,” says Phil LaForge, president and CEO of OneNeck. “Our data center will be built to withstand natural disasters, which means area businesses can rest-assured their IT infrastructure is safe, protected, and always accessible in our new Tier 3+ data center.”
The multi-phase project is designed for rapid expansion, in up to five phases, totaling 160,000 square feet. It will also be able to support data center modules. The project leverages a personal property tax rebate and construction fee waivers provided by the Board of Douglas County Commissioners to build in the southeast corner of the Denver metro area.
“In an effort to continue strategically supporting investing in projects that provide a strong economic foundation for Douglas County, we are proud to support OneNeck in this endeavor,” states Jill Repella, Douglas County Commissioner. “We believe in providing an environment where businesses can succeed. For this reason, it is a pleasure to team up with OneNeck on their data center build, a project that will certainly add to our community’s economic growth.”
About 30 local companies will be involved in the construction of the building. Denver-area contractor JE Dunn Construction will coordinate the project with support from INVISION Architecture, Faith Technologies, and North American Mechanical.
When the doors open in 2015, the data center will resemble other OneNeck data centers in the Midwest. This facility will be built to support common compliance requirements such as SSAE 16, PCI-DSS, and HIPAA among others. It will also include many state-of-the-industry features, such as:
- Three factor security authentication, including iris scanners for personnel identification
- Up to 16-in. thick steel-reinforced concrete walls, roof and floors
- Ultra-quick responding VESDA (Very Early Smoke Detection Apparatus) fire detection system
- Tier 4 electrical system with multiple levels of redundancy and backup
- Energy saving cooling design with a projected PUE of 1.2 or less
- Efficient use of space with a 5kW per cabinet average power density (the normal Colorado home uses about 1 kW), with maximums at 4 times that, or 20kW
“We also plan to deploy ReliaCloud in the new data center to provide businesses with a local cloud solution,” LaForge says.
ReliaCloud™ is an enterprise-class IT Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) solution specifically designed for resource intensive applications and databases that necessitate a secure and compliant operational framework. It’s built with industry-leading products and capabilities from Cisco, EMC, and VMware.
“We appreciate the county board’s support and trust in us,” LaForge added. “We look forward to maximizing this opportunity and, ultimately, to making it an economic success for the county, area businesses, and OneNeck.”
