Data centers located in smaller markets outside the biggest metro areas are finding new opportunities, as recent news from SDN Communications, based in Sioux Falls, S.D., and Midwest Data Center, based in Rock Port, Mo., illustrates.
SDN Communications Inks Deal with Hurricane Electric
SDN Communications, owned by a consortium of smaller broadband providers in South Dakota, opened its data center 10 years ago primarily to provide backup for the consortium’s fiber network, which now covers parts of eight states. But SDN also found strong demand from other organizations that wanted to house their own data in the center, jumpstarting the consortium’s entry into the data center business.
The consortium recently inked a deal with internet backbone operator Hurricane Electric to establish a Hurricane point of presence in the SDN data center. Hurricane Electric says its international IPv6 backbone is the world’s largest. The company also operates an IPv4 backbone.
The PoP will be Hurricane’s first in South Dakota.
The SDN Communications data center initially had 25,000 square feet but is in the process of being expanded to include an additional 25,000 square feet.
SDN customers will be able to connect to Hurricane Electric’s network via 100GE, 10GE, or GigE ports and will be able to exchange IP traffic with over 10,000 different networks to which Hurricane is connected. Hurricane connects to those networks via more than 280 major exchange points and thousands of customer and private peering ports, according to a press release.
Some customers of SDN communications are located far from the Sioux Falls data center but choose to store data their because they see South Dakota as being less prone to disaster than other parts of the country, the data center operator says.
Midwest Data Center Gains a New Customer in Liberty Communications
Midwest Data Center, founded in 2003, provides IT services and consulting to businesses throughout the U.S.
The company gained a new customer in Liberty Communications, a 118-year-old family-owned telecom service provider that serves West Branch and West Liberty, Iowa.
The deal will enable Liberty Communications to offer what a press release calls a “360-degree internet, voice and IT solution” to business customers. Among the services that Liberty Communications will be able to offer are dark web monitoring, workstation management, cloud backup and recovery and more.
Liberty Communications has a fiber network that, according to the company, “rivals even the larger industry players.”
