New Mexico Data Center Benefits, Expansion by NOVA

In mid-April, IT company NOVA Corp. announced an agreement to establish a data center in a former factory in Mesa del Sol in Albuquerque, N.M. The facility was previously utilized by Schott Solar and will be redesigned as a New Mexico data center.

According to the Albuquerque Business Journal, the 133,000 square foot structure will soon have 80,000 square feet utilized for client space and 11,000 square feet set aside for office space. The other 42,000 square feet will be dedicated for training and other business purposes.

Renovations on the former factory have already begun, and NOVA hopes to have the New Mexico data center fully functional by the fall. However, this isn’t the first the time the Navajo Nation-owned organization has grown its New Mexico data center footprint.

In 2011, the company announced the launch of a 50,000 square foot data center, also in the Mesa del Sol multi-use business district. The facility was built to address growing regional needs for data center colocation, cloud services and disaster recovery offerings.

Benefits of New Mexico Data Center Sites
At the time of the 2011 announcement, John Snider, NOVA Corp. president and CEO, noted that the company decided to build out its New Mexico data center footprint mainly due to the region’s beneficial climate.

“After looking at several different sites, NOVA Corporation determined that New Mexico was the best place for the data center due to a number of factors including its geographic location,” Snider said. “Geographically, Albuquerque provides a stable location without serious risk of natural disasters, ability to utilize ambient air cooling, and reduced risk of targeted threat to the area.”

Jim Kozlowski, CenturyLink colocation business development vice president, said the organization also has a strong, successful New Mexico data center service footprint. He also noted the area’s low instance of natural disasters, stating that this aspect is one of the main criteria utilized to select new sites for data center construction.

“There are nine natural disasters we focus on: hurricanes, tornadoes, floods and the like,” Kozlowski said. “And in the U.S., the Southwestern cities like Albuquerque, Phoenix and Las Vegas are subject to none of them.”

In addition, there has been increased demand for data center services from area organizations of all sizes, especially from small to mid-sized businesses. Furthermore, many large enterprises in California house their data and computing infrastructures in nearby out-of-state locations, including in Albuquerque and Phoenix.

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