September 18, 2008

By Jim Stafford
Business Writer

As a virtual army of workers puts the finishing touches on Perimeter Technology Center's 23,000-square-foot data center Wednesday, the company's seven working partners gathered outside the building for a photo shoot.  

"Does this look like it will be ready for an open house tomorrow?” Perimeter's Chief Operating Officer Stan Chase said as dozens of construction workers labored nonstop both inside and outside the facility.

Ready or not, about 300 guests, including Mayor Mick Cornett, are expected to celebrate the opening of the new data center in far west Oklahoma City in an open house that begins at 4 p.m. today.

Why new center differs

"This is our third facility, and for the first time in our six years we got to build one from the dirt up,” Chase said. "We inherited the other two from previous ownership. This one from the blueprints to the walls to the final touches is all Perimeter Technology Center, and that's a good feeling.”

The center will feature disaster recovery space for client companies, a high tech conference room and about 15,000 square feet of raised floor space for computer servers, which John Parsons, Perimeter's chief executive officer, described as "our product space.”

Perimeter serves clients from a broad spectrum of the business world that includes energy, health care, financial services and state and local governments. Those clients locate critical data in the center with the assurance that it will be protected from virtually all potential natural or manmade disasters.

What is advantage?

Oklahoma's location near the geographic center of the nation provides an advantage for companies seeking a safe haven for their critical data, said Parsons, citing the research firm known as Tier1 Research.

"Their heaviest recommendation is ‘Get your data off the coast,'” Parsons said.

In fact, two Houston-based companies visited the Perimeter Technology center this week in the wake of Hurricane Ike, which blew through that city of more than 4 million last weekend. Power could be out for weeks in some Houston areas.

"They are looking to relocate large amounts of data,” Chase said. "We are having more and more companies from the East Coast and the West Coast that are having to deal with hurricanes and earthquakes and power outages.”

Perimeter's local clients include SandRidge Energy, which houses servers in the existing data center. Thomas Winton, chief information officer for SandRidge, said he looked forward to the new facility.

"We've been very pleased with the service we've been provided,” Winton said. "Obviously, this new facility is going to only enhance their capabilities. To me that is exciting as a client.”

How center impacts economy

Perimeter employs about 30 people, including 25 in Oklahoma City and five in Tulsa. It also has a sales representative in Dallas and four more in Oklahoma.

With the new data center coming online, Perimeter will offer clients more than 25,000 square feet of raised floor space for computer servers. That can serve the data needs of hundreds of clients from both within Oklahoma and throughout the rest of the nation, Parsons said.

"We were just talking about it yesterday, how we started off six years ago with 20 old racks left behind by the Williams Communications bankruptcy in a facility that had been in place a few years,” Parsons said. "Now here we are in a brand new 23,000 square-foot facility, and one that we think we are going to need many more of in the next few years.”