By JP Laqueur, Senior Vice President of Marketing, DataBank
DataBank is excited to announce that we’ll be holding a two-week food drive this June 20-July 1 and will be accepting food donations at many different DataBank data centers. Our employees are already getting ready to contribute, but DataBank customers (as well as anyone else) are also welcome to participate.
Why are we holding this food drive, and why are we doing it now? More than 42 million Americans face hunger each and every day, a number that includes one out of every six children. Unfortunately, this problem could grow worse as our country continues to deal with supply chain issues and rising inflation that threatens to make even common goods and staples too expensive for some consumers.
The best solution is straightforward: Get food to the people who don’t have enough, when they need it. The last part is important because many people simply don’t think of donating at this time of year. During the holiday season, donors tend to flood food banks with contributions. Yet, unfortunately, in the spring and summer, this level declines dramatically. In fact, this is the time of year when food banks need donations the most.
How You Can Help
Donating is easy. Anyone can use the designated donation bins at the DataBank data centers listed below to drop off dry and canned goods, such as a peanut butter, canned soup, fruit, vegetables, pasta, and rice.
We will be accepting donations at the following DataBank facilities:
Atlanta: ATL1 (in the lobby of the Coda high rise)
Indianapolis: IND1
Kansas City: MCI3
Salt Lake City: SLC5
Ashburn, Virginia: IAD1
Austin: AUS 1 (in the facility’s mantrap)
Houston: HOU1, HOU2, HOU3, and HOU5 (in each facility’s lobby)
Irvine, California: SNA2
Seattle: SEA2
Pittsburgh: PIT1 and PIT2
Minneapolis: MSP2
Chicago: ORD3 or ORD4
Dallas: DFW1 (downtown Dallas) or DFW 3 (Plano)
New York City: LGA1 and LGA2
Denver: DEN2 and DEN3
You’re not close to one of our data centers? No problem. Even if you can’t donate in person, you can still make a contribution with Amazon. All you have to do is use your personal Amazon account and choose to ship any items to DataBank headquarters:
DataBank
400 South Akard
Suite 100
Dallas, Texas 75202
Our Tradition—and Commitment—to Giving Back
This summer’s food drive is just one example of DataBank’s commitment to being a good corporate citizen and contributing to the well-being our of communities. The food drive is made possible by DataBank’s Volunteer Time Off program, which gives all employees paid time off for volunteer activities, and its CultureCorp Ambassador program, a group of internal ambassadors assembled from a wide range of departments and markets in DataBank who have one goal in mind: helping others. For this food drive, our CultureCorps Ambassadors are helping set up donation bins, collecting all the contributions, and taking pictures from their market to document—and celebrate—donors’ generosity.
Join Us to Make a Difference
The DataBank team is ready to help those in need, when they need it most. Join us this summer by dropping off dry or canned goods at the closest DataBank data center (or via Amazon), volunteering at a local food bank, or even donating canned goods at your local grocery store.
If you have any questions, please reach out to JP Laqueur, Senior Vice President of Marketing.
Infrastructure providers who over-emphasize the importance of cell tower locations miss the point of true edge computing. Workload deployments are driven by a range of requirements, not just tower locations. Raul Martynek, CEO of DataBank and a leader in IT infrastructure shares his perspective on AMT’s acquisition of CoreSite.
Last week, the CFO of American Tower spoke at the NAREIT conference and was asked about their CoreSite acquisition and the rationale for AMT acquiring a data center company. A couple of segments of his response caught my attention.
“We’ve got the towers. We didn’t have the cloud on-ramps and the direct commercial relationships with cloud companies and all these other landline networking companies. That’s what we pick up with CoreSite, so we can hopefully kind of bring these puzzle pieces together in a way that you get cloud on-ramps at the tower site it satisfies the lower latency requirements and wireless 5G networks. It gives on-ramps and compute power close proximity to base radios.” –AMT
Let’s talk about that a bit, but first, some context. When I heard the news of AMT buying CoreSite, I was a bit surprised. Being part of the DigitalBridge ecosystem, I regularly dialogue with my CEO peers at Vertical Bridge, Vantage, Extenet, Zayo, and the other companies in the group. This gives one the benefit of having a “360 degree view” of the internet infrastructure sector and insight into the important trends happening in towers, small cells, hyperscale colocation, and fiber. Because we are independent companies with independent boards and different investors group — but with a common shareholder in DigitalBridge — we have the opportunity to focus on our core business but also the incentive to collaborate and explore areas of synergy where it makes mutual sense.
When “The Edge” started to gain currency a few years ago, and (if you recall) took the form of modular data centers at the base of cell towers, I immediately called Alex Gellman, the CEO of Vertical Bridge to compare notes and thoughts on the topic. After months of conversations with a wide range of people investigating this topic, I was skeptical, and expressed my views in a blog post at that time. Since then, Vertical Bridge and DataBank have had a regular dialogue about the Edge and how we see it evolving in our respective sectors and with a keen interest on where our paths might be converging.
I continued to track the space and in 2020 identified a number of use cases where the Vertical Bridge tower sites (or other land sites they own or control- not all RF sites sit on a macro tower) and the DataBank colocation solution could align. In late 2020 we began to test modular data centers as a way to capture those use cases. What we have learned is that tower sites are helpful for modular deployments because they are already entitled for telecom infrastructure and, typically, have available power and fiber.
“…tower sites are helpful for modular deployments because they are already entitled for telecom infrastructure and, typically, have available power and fiber.”
What we also learned, is that the tower itself is not the driver of site selection, but instead some other customer requirement, like proximity to a set of network assets, or the requirement for highly localized compute, or distance from a particular collection of infrastructure assets. We believe modular is an excellent solution for geographically specific workloads, with the workload driving the site selection, not the location of the tower site. Sometimes the tower site is a good location, and sometimes it’s not. We have deployed about half a dozen sites in support of one such geographically specific workload. We are using a combination of tower sites and straight ground leases because we are letting the workload dictate the location, not the location of the tower site.
“The tower itself is not the driver of site selection…Sometimes it’s in a good location, and sometimes it’s not.”
Now back to CoreSite and AMT. In another part of the interview the AMT CFO stated:
“So, we bought CoreSite, it’s a combination of about 24 buildings that spread across eight different markets. So, the geographic location of these assets is important to us. They’re in the Silicon Valley, down in LA, in Chicago, down in Denver, they’re in Boston, New York, Northern Virginia, and down into Miami. So, they’re well distributed throughout the U.S.” –AMT
We completely agree that “the geographic location of these assets is important.” In fact, we believe the Edge is all about geography. The Edge is fundamentally the decentralization of internet infrastructure and the compute, storage, and delivery of applications and data. As customers evolve their infrastructure stack to be more decentralized, they will naturally seek out a wider range of geographic locations in which to place their workloads. That is exactly what DataBank customers have told us and why we have built — through our acquisitions and organic builds — the largest geographic footprint of any data center operator in the US, public or private: over 65 data centers in 27+ metro markets. In fact, DataBank’s geographic footprint puts critical infrastructure within 50 miles of half the U.S. population.
Yes, the Edge is geography. We call that the “Metro Edge”, and it is where today the largest technology companies and hyperscalers are deploying infrastructure. Those deployments are occurring in traditional brick and mortar data centers because of the scale of the workloads these customers require, and that scale is not available with a modular data center solution. I don’t think you can be an Edge data center provider and be in only the top 8-10 metros; it’s an oxymoron. Yes, there will be so called “Edge” workloads in markets like Chicago, New York and Los Angeles, but those markets alone are insufficient for customers’ true edge deployment needs. Rather, having the widest geographic reach will enable an infrastructure provider to deliver the most comprehensive solution to your customers.
“We see both the Metro Edge and Mobile Edge as a combination of modular and traditional data centers depending on the workload requirements and geographic specificity of the application.”
We think the “Mobile Edge” will evolve in a similar way for similar reasons and that aggregation will occur at the metro level as 5G networks are built and evolve to Standalone core and vRAN standards. We see both the Metro Edge and Mobile Edge as a combination of modular and traditional data centers depending on the workload requirements and geographic specificity of the application. We intend to continue to expand our geography, as we did recently with the acquisition of CyrusOne’s data center assets in Houston, bringing us to the 5th largest metro market in the country, and through organic development like our recent acquisitions of land in the New York, Denver, and Atlanta markets.
We also intend to collaborate with Vertical Bridge to identify those specific workloads where a modular data center solution is a better answer than a traditional brick and mortar data center. That can be anywhere in a metro market, not just where the VB tower sites are. That is precisely why Vertical Bridge coined the phrase, “Edge to Suit”, and we believe that is the right way to think about the interplay between towers and edge.
Kansas City—where DataBank operates three state-of-the-art colocation facilities—stands at the center of the growing national market for data center services and solutions. The area is home to AMC Theaters, Hallmark Cards, American Century Investments, H&R Block, and Black & Veatch.
Kansas City’s continuing growth
In the KC Tech Council report, KC Tech Spec V4, analyst firm RMS noted, “Kansas City has a growing technology ecosystem that is a critical component of the region’s overall vitality. As the region emerges from the pandemic, its recovery has outpaced the overall US recovery rate.”
According to Carla Ball, DataBank director of product management, “Kansas City is poised for strong growth which is why we continue to expand our presence in the region. Its strong economy and relatively low cost of doing business make it an ideal tech hub.”
As these observations suggest, enterprises that put their stake in Kansas City enjoy increased opportunities for growth and a business-friendly government that offers numerous business incentives. Ranked in a CNBC study as one of the Top States for Business, Kansas is the heart of Silicon Prairie and an excellent location for organizations in search of the right data center.
An Expanding Midwest Presence
DataBank recently announced the construction of a new data hall, set to open by early 2023. With these data centers, we offer ideal failover opportunities for Chicago and Minneapolis, providing enough geographic distance without being too far away. We also offer a prime gateway for establishing low-latency interconnections across America to link east coast and west coast data centers.
Leading off in our KC data center line-up is our South Lake facility (MCI1), situated in the tech-forward suburb of Lenexa, just south of Kansas City. This data center features direct, on-site connectivity to several Tier 1 carriers. Powered by two separate substations with on-site, diesel-powered generators for backup, the data center includes 6,000 raised square feet of space for customer equipment and advanced cooling technology.
Up next is the Pine Ridge data center (MCI2) in the technology-rich Overland Park suburb. The site houses more than 12,000 raised square feet of data center space and three independent data halls with direct connectivity to multiple top-tier carriers.
Finally, MCI3, our newest facility, is the keystone of our South Lake Data Center Campus. This 25,000 square-foot data center augments the innovative and growing Kansas City market with a full range of colocation, cloud, and connectivity solutions. A Tier III design along with diverse utility power feeds, multiple network entry points, and multiple fiber providers all contribute to this data center’s robust resiliency.
Compute Resources That Offer Scalability, Reliability, Security, and Compliance
With a longstanding history of service and support in the area, DataBank continues to invest in expanding our footprint and capabilities to meet the growing demand. Thanks to multiple diverse sources for local energy generation—including coal, nuclear, and wind—the area offers reliable, low-cost energy.
That’s something DataBank plans to pass along so our customers can cost-optimize their use of our reliable, scalable, secure, and compliant compute and connectivity resources. To learn more, take a closer look at our Kansas City data centers or request a no-obligation quote today.
DataBank’s Kansas City Metro by the Numbers
3
Data Centers
7.8
Total Megawatts Critical IT Load
20+
Total Carriers
43,000
Total Square Feet
DataBank’s Kansas City Metro Data Centers
MCI2: Pine Ridge Data Center
10605 W. 84th Terrace, Overland Park, KS
12,000 square feet, 2.25 MW of on-site power
Explore this data center
MCI3: South Lake Campus
11200 Lakeview Ave, Lenexa, KS
6,000 square feet, 1 MW of on-site power
Explore this data center