ANN ARBOR — Online Tech Inc., the Ann Arbor-based data center services provider, announced Wednesday it had purchased a data center in downtown Indianapolis.
Online Tech’s purchase of the purpose-built corporate data center and planned upgrades represents an investment of more than $10 million.
Online Tech said it would use the new location to deliver its full product line of secure, compliant cloud and colocation services for healthcare, financial services, retail and other companies in regulated industries.
“Indianapolis is the 13th largest city in the United States — even larger than San Francisco — and we believe its businesses are underserved by secure cloud computing providers,” said Online Tech co-CEO Mike Klein. “The city’s large population of healthcare companies must ensure that all patient data remains safe and HIPAA compliant, which fits well with our healthcare IT focus and expertise. Indianapolis also has a growing community of financial, retail, e-commerce and software businesses. They will all benefit from having an enterprise-class, secure, compliant cloud right in Indiana.”
The investment will create local construction jobs and up to 25 permanent jobs for IT, sales and data center professionals in Indianapolis. Online Tech said it planned to complete renovations on the data center by Sept. 30.
“The world-class infrastructure that we are bringing to Indianapolis will support the local economy,” said Online Tech co-CEO Yan Ness. “It will provide local businesses access to one of the most secure and compliant clouds in the world — right in their backyard. We looked at the entire Great Lakes region, and chose Indianapolis as it has a need for the full suite of security products and services that we offer. CIOs and CEOs know the challenges of making cloud computing not only secure, but also fully encrypted and compliant with regulations and standards ranging from HIPAA and SOX to PCI and Safe Harbor. Our record of accomplishment helping businesses to keep their data safe and their systems compliant is unmatched. Our Indianapolis investment will allow us to serve the expanding and critical needs of the region’s businesses immediately.”
The 44,000-square-foot data center design will support 3 megawatts of electrical load and 16,000 square feet of raised floor space. The data center will deliver a fully redundant power infrastructure to ensure uptime, fed by two separate utility feeds that guarantee resiliency. The data center also accesses a high concentration of fiber optics, making it one of the most interconnected buildings in Indianapolis — which provides customers access to multiple options for network providers.
Online Tech’s new Indianapolis center will be the fifth data center in its portfolio. The company currently has more than 100,000 square feet in four data centers in Michigan. With more than 300 miles now between data centers, Online Tech will also be able to support customers in other markets that need disaster recovery and backup services across state lines, and that want significant geographic separation between sites.
“This is our first facility outside of Michigan and is the latest in a series of sizable facility investments to expand our infrastructure, including a major new data center in metro Detroit and the expansion of our mid-Michigan facility,” Ness said. “We see demand for our services across the Great Lakes region and nationally, and our long-range growth plan includes expansion into other Great Lakes markets.”
More about the company at www.onlinetech.com.