Secant Technologies announced that their nearly completed Michigan data center will officially open in mid-September 2014. The $5 million, 3,400 square foot facility was planned three years ago but unforeseen complications caused delays in construction.
With their new Kalamazoo facility, Secant will become the sole provider in the region to offer a combination of cloud hosting, colocation and managed data center services. Situated equidistant from Chicago and Detroit, the center is poised to provide North-South, geo-redundant disaster recovery services for organizations based in Grand Rapids, South Bend and Indianapolis.
“Secant’s new data center is the first of its kind in West Michigan,” said Secant CIO Alex Ellingsen. “This means that for the first time local organizations can move their computing infrastructure into a highly secure and reliable facility without having to travel hundreds of miles. Most importantly they can do this using local telecom links including high speed fiber which eliminates a substantial portion of the cost and challenges with making use of a remote data center.”
Secant’s Michigan data center has a fiber-rich, carrier-neutral environment and offers a variety of high-performance connectivity options. The facility meets multiple regulatory guidelines including HIPAA and SSAE16 SOC 1, creating a secure location for companies that must comply with SOX, PCI and GLBA regulations to store their data.
The facility also meets FEMA 361 standards for handling severe weather and is built to withstand straight line winds and even a direct strike from a tornado. The Kalamazoo data center boasts 12-inch thick concrete walls and doors with the ability to resist a debris strike at 300 MPH. Dual-redundant electrical and power components are also featured, enclosed in large concrete walls and housed on either end of the data center to reduce the likelihood of switch or generator failure.
