Saving data
Dean Anderson
9/29/2008

Hurricanes to the southeast, rolling blackouts to the northeast and wildfires and earthquakes on the West Coast are all fueling increased demand to do business in the Heartland.
Jim Mason, vice president of technology initiatives at The State Chamber of Oklahoma, says recent calamities for the rest of the nation are good for Oklahoma business.

“Certainly the interest in Oklahoma has not gone down any at all. In fact, it has probably gone up during this time when things are pretty rough on both coasts,” Mason said.

One industry, in particular, that expects to cash in is data storage.

John Parsons is president and CEO of Perimeter Technology, which recently opened its third data facility in Oklahoma.

Located in Oklahoma City, the new center will allow companies around the country to protect their data from natural disasters.

“We decided building from the ground up was too important for the high, high density power needs today and especially in the next five to 10 years,” Parsons said.

He said building was spurred on by client demand, with the construction team of Timberlake Construction and primary subcontractors Osborne Electric Co. and United Mechanical Inc. given an abbreviated timeline to finish the project.

Construction began Dec. 3, 2007, and clients were set to move in the first week of October.

“Ten months for a 23,000-square-foot facility with this much complexity to it is pretty aggressive, but we’ve maintained the quality we wanted and got the project done on time and on budget,” Parsons said.

Perimeter Technology purchased 21 acres of land next to its existing facility at 4100 Perimeter Center and plans to build nine more facilities just like the one recently opened.

During the fourth quarter, 12 clients are expected to move into the new facility, Parsons said.

“More and more companies are looking,” he said. “It’s the massive hurricanes on the East and Gulf coasts and the earthquake potential on the West Coast – those two types of natural disasters take out hundreds of miles of infrastructure. They don’t take out a single substation or single generating plant of a power company; they take out all the assets of multiple power companies. That’s where you’re down long-term, and that’s what Houston is undergoing.”

Land, construction, labor and, most importantly for data centers, Oklahoma’s power costs are low, Parsons says.

“Between powering the servers and feeding the power into the cooling system to cool the heat those servers kick off, from an operational cost, power is over 50 percent of the cost,” he said.

Mason said Oklahoma is now competing favorably with Tier I cities, such as Dallas, in the data storage industry.

“In terms of data centers, I think a lot of people are surprised the kind of service they can get here – not only in a sense of capacity, but having reliable redundant services,” Mason said. “Everything they would look for, they’re finding here.”

Google’s 2007 announcement of a $600 million data center project in Pryor has helped. Situated on 800 acres of the MidAmerica Industrial Park in Mayes County, Google’s facility will be staffed by up to 200 workers, with full-time employees earning an annual salary of $48,000 a year.

EDS also announced plans last year to expand its existing data management center in Tulsa by 364,000 square feet.

“When we’ve been able to talk to the right person, we’ve had very favorable results, and we think that will continue,” Parsons said. “You at least get them on the phone when you tell them EDS and Google have chosen Oklahoma. If we can get their ear for five to 10 minutes, it generally warrants a trip out here.”