Keystone NAP announced in mid-November that it plans to create a new Pennsylvania data center. The facility is being constructed on the site of a former U.S. Steel Corp. mill in Bucks County and will be built using a modular data center approach. Keystone is partnering with Schneider Electric to create custom-built, 400 kW KeyBlock modular units that will be the basis for the Pennsylvania data center.
This is Keystone's first Northeast data center with the advanced capabilities necessary to meet the needs of today's enterprises. The Pennsylvania data center will provide customers with access to redundant, carrier-neutral fiber routes connecting to major peering points within the U.S.
Peter Ritz, founder and CEO of KeyStone NAP, said that the location of the facility also makes it an ideal site for organizations with high-capacity storage needs in New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.
"We are bridging a crucial technology gap on the East Coast," said Ritz. "Across industries including healthcare, financial services, higher education and more, there is a growing reliance on enterprise applications hosted in private, public, and hybrid clouds. Yet until now, there haven't been solutions in the region to address the new demands those applications create."
Ritz added that the former steel mill is ideal for data center construction because it is in close proximity to four commercial power plants and multiple fiber lines. Jason Walker, director of Schneider Electric's east coast data center service provider group, said that access to diverse redundant power already places the Pennsylvania data center at an advantage in the current market.
"I look at 50 data centers a year, at a minimum," said Walker. "Power is the limiting factor for most data centers. The megawatts available and the diversity of sourcing here are unique. It's a former steel mill, so the structure is nice. It has high level security – the facility is on [a peninsula]. It's equidistant between Philly and New York. It's on the hotbed of east coast fiber transit."
