TierPoint Breaks Ground on New Data Center, Its Second in OKC

By Scott Baltic, Contributing Editor

TierPoint has broken ground on a new 69,000-square-foot data center in Oklahoma City and expects to complete the project next summer, the company announced Thursday. TierPoint declined to disclose a dollar figure on the project.

The center, with 30,000 square feet of raised-floor space, will be the second one at TierPoint’s 15-acre Oklahoma City campus, which already has a 22,000-square-foot facility, built in 2009.

TierPoint also operates a data center in Tulsa with about 9,000 square feet of raised floor. Both existing facilities were previously operated by Perimeter Technology Center, until TierPoint’s 2011 acquisition of that company.

Even once the new data center is done, there will be room at the campus to add two more of similar size, a TierPoint spokesperson told Commercial Property Executive.

The new Tier III carrier-class, carrier-neutral facility will include N+1 redundant power and accommodate as much as 30 kilowatts per rack. Like all TierPoint data centers, it will be SSAE 16 audited, with 24/7 customer access. Security will include around-the-clock on-site personnel, biometrics, proximity sensors and logging at all entrances, and external/internal cameras with a digital recording system.

The facility will include 10,000 square feet of business continuity office space and offer a private customer lounge and work areas with multiple large staging rooms for customer installs and upgrades.

“Oklahoma’s low costs of living, land and electrical power have made it one of the nation’s most inviting data center locations,” Todd Currie, general manager for TierPoint Oklahoma, said in a release.

Headquartered in St. Louis, TierPoint operates 141,000 square feet of raised-floor space in Baltimore, Dallas, Oklahoma City, Philadelphia, Spokane, Seattle and Tulsa.

According to a survey by Forrester Consulting for Digital Realty Trust Inc., released in May, business and IT leaders at midmarket firms (as much as $500 million in revenue) put the highest priorities in data center investment decisions on network connectivity options, including carrier availability and density (82 percent); resiliency level and availability of the data center (80 percent), the level of control over the facility (78 percent), and access to cloud and other partners (75 percent).

Last month, vXchnge, of Tampa, announced construction of a 70,000-square-foot data center at 1500 Spring Garden St., a mixed-use office building in Philadelphia’s Center City.

In June, Ascent announced plans to develop a new $85 million data center on a 15-acre greenfield site in Wellston, Mo., a suburb of St. Louis, Ascent’s hometown.

And also in June, ViaWest opened a $208 million, 210,000-square-foot data center just east of Centennial Airport in metro Denver.