 |
Three of the seven
Perimeter Technology
co-owners — Terry
Morrison (left), Stan
Chase and Brad Thomas —
gather near new
telecommunications
equipment Thursday
during the grand opening
of the company’s
renovated facility in
the Brady District.
|
|
|
Firm
updates building for data
storage
It
took an additional $2
million in renovations over
the last two years to an
already heavily modified
building, but Perimeter
Technology has finished its
Tulsa network operations
center.
The end result at 322 E.
Archer St. is one of the
safest and most secure
information technology
centers in the state, said
John Parsons, president of
Oklahoma City-based
Perimeter.
"It's truly a one-of-a-kind
facility for this region of
the country," he said.
The company employs four peo
ple at the
37,000-square-foot building
but plans to expand to about
a dozen over the next 20
months as it gains clients,
officials said.
Perimeter purchased the
building in May 2005 for
$1.7 million, Parsons said.
The facility began life as
an ice house in the 1920s,
so it has 13-inch-thick
walls. Former
telecommunications giant
Genuity leased the building
in 2001 and made more than
$5 million in renovations to
transform it into a data
center.
Some of the changes included
multiple in-house power
plants with capacity
reaching multiple megawatts,
hundreds of tons of cooling
capacity, an internal
generator with a
4,000-gallon diesel fuel
tank and, of course, miles
of fiber-optic cable.
"Archer Street now has more
fiber buried beneath and
beside it than any other
single street in the state,"
Parsons said.
Genuity filed for bankruptcy
in 2003 and left the
building, leaving behind all
the new equipment. Some
months later, Parsons
explored the possibility of
expanding into Tulsa and
decided the building was
ideal for Perimeter's needs.
Perimeter now stores and ser
vices primary or secondary
systems for more than 30
clients, and Parsons said
he's bullish about
persuading more companies to
outsource their data
storage.
"Companies storing their own
data is like the banking
industry 150 years ago," he
said. "Back then, each
company kept cash in the
back of their business,
which was much more
inefficient than putting it
in a bank."
Perimeter's additional
modifications to the
building include more
technological infrastructure
and disaster recovery office
space, which would allow
critical employees of
clients to resume work in
the event of a disaster at
the primary location.
The facility also has
state-of-the-art security
systems and a dual-interlock
dry pipe fire suppression
system, which only sprays
water in the immediate area
where extreme heat is
detected.
