Bick Group Goes Green With $20 Million Cloud Data Center
The St. Louis-based data center and solution provider was tapped to build the 46,000-square-foot data center by Involta LLC, a third party provider of data center facilities and technology services. Bick Group will build and engineer the data center, including mechanical, electrical and architectural disciplines. The company will also manage all construction activities and ensure that once up and running the facility can handle increased security and performance demands.
The project broke ground this week and the data center is expected to be fully operational by fourth quarter 2011.
"With the explosive growth in data and computing requirements today, and no end in sight for that growth, more companies and government agencies are turning to third-party service providers like Involta to house and manage their most important data," Chris Scaglione, Bick Group vice president of client solutions, said in a statement. Scaglione added that the data center will be the "heart of cloud-computing platforms" for companies throughout the region and the world.
Bick Group said that as companies move into the cloud they're seeking out reliable, secure and accessible locations to house their data. Involta offers companies that don't want to build or expand their own data centers a location for their data.
"It is often not cost-effective for businesses to independently build and support the redundant systems and security features this data center will offer," said Bruce Lehrman, CEO, Involta, in a statement. "Using this data center will allow organizations to focus on their core businesses rather than complex infrastructure and facilities issues."
The two companies said the data center will be designed to receive LEED Certification from the U.S. Green Building Council and verified by the Green building Certification Institute (GBCI).
"Over the past four decades, we have experienced and managed several technological evolutions in the data center, spanning both IT and facilities, to drive better business performance for our clients. To succeed today, you have to understand how IT fits in the bigger picture of a business, and the data center is at the center of that IT ecosystem," Scaglione said.
The data center build continues a recent cloud computing kick for Bick. In February, Bick Group acquired Blue Mountain Labs, a cloud computing-focused consulting and strategic advisory firm and added Blue Mountain into its IT Services Practice.