Charlotte Data Centers Get New Neighbor

Charlotte data center providers will welcome a new neighbor to town.  Governor Bev Purdue announced at a conference this morning that Time Warner Cable (TWC) will build a data center on its headquarters property in Charlotte.  The project, which is slated to take approximately three years to complete, will add as many as 225 jobs to the economy.  The capital investment in the project is pegged at roughly $100 million.

Charlotte Data Centers

The Charlotte region has seen and explosion of data center growth over the last year.  Time Warner Cable joins a growing list of large corporations that have chosen the area to construct large data centers for the benefit of their operations.  Other organizations that are building, or have built data centers in the area include Google, Facebook, Apple, and Disney is reported to be looking at a site in the area as well.  Three of the most imperative reasons that companies are choosing the area include the low cost of utility power, low taxes, and low cost of land.

Who Uses Data Centers?

The phrase ‘data center’ has entered the mainstream consumer vocabulary as of late, and is no longer limited to the vernacular of the technology vertical.  This is partly due to a huge increase the usage of affordable technology by both consumers and businesses.  To be clear, the term ‘data center’ can mean different things to different organizations, but it is generally associated with a large ‘warehouse-like’ facility that is designed to be a welcoming environment for a company’s technology infrastructure, which includes servers, storage hardware, routers, switches, etc.

Consumers often unwittingly use the services provided by data centers whenever they store documents on Google Docs, tweet on Twitter, log a comment on Linked In, or simply post a picture or a comment on Facebook.  Many consumers don’t realize that the information in Facebook that is on their computer or smartphone screen exists in a data center and is being provided to the device that they are using (e.g. phone) by a server in a data center.

Businesses leverage data centers to reduce risks.  Unlike social media users who access the servers in the data centers of Facebook, Google, and the like, businesses utilize data centers in a different manner for the same reasons.  Similar to these private gargantuan data centers dedicated to the companies that build them (and the users of their applications), data centers that are open to the public provide a secure environment with a reliable infrastructure of equipment.

Data Center Basics

A well-designed data center is comprised of redundant features to keep its clients’ data accessible during events that would render a traditional office mostly incapacitated.  For example, these redundant features address instances where the service from the local power company fails by providing battery backups and commercial grade generators that supply power to keep servers running.  Construction companies often accidentally cut telecommunications lines underground; therefore, data center providers design their facilities to house multiple telecommunication providers where the telecommunication lines enter the facilities at multiple entry points.  This allows connectivity to be maintained during such events.

Due to the significant capital investment required for data center construction, many businesses engage the services of a third party data center to house their equipment and/or data.  This arrangement permits the customer to focus squarely on running their business without the distractions, challenges, and costs of operating an onsite data center or server cabinet.  With the recent activity in the area, TWC will have much local experience to draw on when they begin to construct their new Charlotte data center.