Cloud solutions provider Savvis, a subsidiary of CenturyLink, announced plans to open its newest facility in Shakopee, Minn., in spring 2014.
"The Twin Cities area has long served as a hub of activity to retailers, consumer brands, healthcare and media companies," said Savvis president Jeff Von Deylen. "All of which need more convenient and secure ways to access, maintain and manage their rapidly expanding data."
The new location will be a 100,000 square foot facility on a 10-acre data center campus . The data center design will include housing for corporate customer computers, software and data. The facility will include 4.8 megawatts of IT load. However, only 13 percent of the floor space and 1.2 megawatts of IT load will be used at first, Savvis representatives said.
The new facility is part of a project to construct three additional sites of 25,000 square feet each with Savvis partner Compass Datacenters LLC, reported the Minneapolis Star Tribune. The data center finance plan includes $26 million for the construction of the first facility, as well as an initial investment of $90 million.
"Working with Savvis to quickly facilitate expansion in the Minneapolis-St. Paul market, we've developed a streamlined strategy for future expansion and response to the growing demands of businesses in the region," said Chris Crosby, chief executive officer of Compass Datacenters.
The company said the data center will be used as an outsourcing facility from which customers can run or store their cloud computing operations. According to the Star Tribune, Savvis hopes the new site will attract corporate businesses utilizing cloud computing who also have a desire to know where the data is located physically. The Star Tribune reported that government regulations obligate certain data center customers, like those in the healthcare and government sectors, to be informed of where their sensitive data is stored.
"Increasingly more customers request a local data center presence and this site is helping to meet those needs," said CenturyLink's Midwest president Duane Ring.
