History
Methodically building the foundation of our digital lives for today and tomorrow — the DataBank story, from a Dallas landmark in 2005 to a nationwide platform today.
Methodically Building Digital Infrastructure for What’s Next
DataBank Ltd. was founded in 2005 in the beautiful historic former Federal Reserve Bank Building in downtown Dallas, Texas. As a federal depository built to withstand any event, the building had excellent bones to become a data center. The 96 year-old landmark building was converted into a data center during the height of the dot-com boom in 1999. Beyond architecture, the founders were cognizant of the market’s growing need for a more personalized colocation solution.
In July 2016, DataBank was acquired by a group of leading blue-chip investors led by DigitalBridge, and the DataBank team merged C7 Data Centers, two assets from 365 Datacenters and Edge Hosting into the fold. The Company also completed several data center build-outs, and made a series of executive appointments, including the hire of current CEO Raul Martynek.
Since then, DataBank has acquired “zColo” (the data centers of Zayo Networks) and four Houston-area data centers from CyrusOne, expanding its footprint to 65+ data centers in 27+ markets, while also significantly boosting its capabilities in managed services, cloud, security, and compliance.
Key Milestones in Our Growth
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DataBank is founded in Dallas
DataBank Ltd. was founded in 2005 in the beautiful historic former Federal Reserve Bank Building in downtown Dallas, Texas. As a federal depository built to withstand any event, the building had excellent bones to become a data center. The 96 year-old landmark building was converted into a data center during the height of the dot-com boom in 1999. Beyond architecture, the founders were cognizant of the market’s growing need for a more personalized colocation solution.
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Arsalon Technologies acquisition
Arsalon Technologies was acquired by DataBank in April of 2014. This acquisition provided DataBank with a super-regional footprint spanning three major central US markets. The deal brought two additional data center facilities, a large team of technical staff, and a broad set of robust cloud and managed services to DataBank’s business portfolio. Geographically located in the center of the U.S. with significant long-haul fiber connections, Kansas City is literally in the center of the growing national market for Data Center services and solutions. The area boasts reliable and low cost energy and an overall low cost of doing business, with diverse sources for local energy generation (coal, nuclear, and wind). DataBank continues to make investments in the region, most recently announcing the construction of its third data center in the Kansas City market.
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DigitalBridge-led acquisition
DataBank was acquired by a group of leading blue-chip investors led by DigitalBridge, and the DataBank team merged C7 Data Centers, two assets from 365 Datacenters and Edge Hosting into the fold. The Company also completed several data center build-outs, and made a series of executive appointments, including the hire of current CEO Raul Martynek.
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Edge Hosting acquisition
Edge Hosting was acquired by DataBank in September of 2016. Known by customers for its tagline, “Stay Up. Sleep More,” Edge Hosting was founded in 1998 by Vlad Friedman, DataBank’s current CTO. Pioneering an outcomes-based strategy in the world of managed hosting, Edge Hosting led the way as a cloud service provider in highly regulated industries by designing, operating, and simplifying secure and compliant IaaS and PaaS Managed Cloud solutions. Edge Hosting delivered comprehensive operational coverage of controls for FedRAMP, HIPAA, PCI, SSAE 18-SOC 2 Type II, and EU Privacy Shield Framework. Their services included Compliance Architecture and Audit Support, Cloud Migration and Design, AWS Managed Services, and Secure Federal/Healthcare Hybrid Clouds.
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C7 Data Centers acquisition
DataBank acquired C7 Data Centers in the first quarter of 2017. Since the acquisition, DataBank has focused heavily on the incorporation of the staff, systems, and support organization, and building relationships with the existing customer base of local and regional enterprises. The three data center footprint includes a downtown interconnection-rich location connected by redundant dark fiber to the 23+ acre campus in Bluffdale, UT, south of Salt Lake City. Forbes has called Utah the “Best State for Business” and “Least Debt Burdened”, and the Pew Charitable Trust says Utah is the “Best State Managed Government”. Easily accessible to both West Coast and local enterprise customers, DataBank’s Salt Lake platform offers an attractive location for placement of mission critical infrastructure to meet and exceed customer business objectives.
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Cleveland & Pittsburgh data centers (from 365 Data Centers)
Strategic acquisitions of individual data centers that expanded DataBank into Pittsburgh and Cleveland. In January 2017, DataBank acquired data center facilities in both Cleveland and Pittsburgh from 365 Data Centers. The acquisition provided DataBank with key interconnection assets in both markets and further accelerated the company’s national expansion strategy. Both markets were identified by DataBank as attractive expansion geographies, and the acquisition provided the Company with differentiated entry points due to the number of top-tier carriers, the downtown locations, and the existing high-quality customer bases. DataBank plans to leverage these locations as an anchor for future expansion in each market.
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LightBound acquisition
LightBound was acquired by DataBank in December of 2018. DataBank completed its acquisition of Indianapolis-based LightBound in Q4 2019. Initially founded in 1994, LightBound grew to become a leading provider of cloud, colocation, network, and managed services in the Midwest market. Its two enterprise-class data centers – IND1 and IND2 – expand DataBank’s growing portfolio of edge data centers with over 56,000 gross square feet of colocation space and 9.5MW of installed UPS. Located in the downtown Indy Telcom Center, the most densely interconnected location in the Indianapolis metro area, these facilities allow DataBank to provide the highest quality Tier III capacity in the market.
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zColo acquisition
DataBank acquired the data center assets of Zayo Group, a.k.a. zColo, in December 2020, significantly expanding our footprint from 20 data centers in 9 markets to 65+ data centers in 29+ markets and creating one of the largest privately held data center operators in North America. zColo itself grew via acquisition over a 10 year period, first launching as a stand-alone unit within Zayo in 2009 and expanding with its own acquisitions of facilities from FiberNet, Latisys, Stream, and others. zColo’s data centers are located in markets across the U.S. and included major carrier interconnects in markets such as New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, Denver, Chicago, Minneapolis, Boston, Philadelphia, and Miami.The acquisition of zColo put DataBank at the forefront of the edge infrastructure wave, enabling enterprises, hyperscalers, cloud, content, and software customers to move their mission-critical workloads and platforms closer to end-user populations in second-, third-, and fourth-tier markets. With the zColo acquisition, DataBank grew to: 65 data centers in 29 markets (up from 20 data centers and 9 markets), 1.1M raised square feet of data center space, 141 MW of installed UPS capacity, over 30,000 network cross connects, 20 major network interconnection points, and 13 cloud nodes. The zColo integration process took just over a year to complete. After acquiring the 44 data centers from Zayo Group Holdings in 2020, DataBank announced the completion of the integration in February 2022.
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CyrusOne Houston acquisition
DataBank Acquired CyrusOne’s Houston Data Centers in March 2022. Building upon DataBank’s deep roots in the Texas market, this $670M transaction added four data centers and the country’s 3rd largest metro to DataBank’s already industry-leading footprint. The Houston facilities increased DataBank’s capacity by 300,000 square feet of data center raised-flooring and 42.5 megawatts of power.
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