TEAM Breaks Ground on New Data Center – CDW Berbee Anchor Tenant (Madison, Wisconsin)

Many consider the Upper Midwest as the nation’s "fly-over" region where businesses are ignored in favor of making money on the coasts. One Iowa company, who builds world-class data centers, says that mentality is the key to their success; they call it “security through obscurity”. Their plan is paying off – evidenced today by the groundbreaking of a new TEAM Companies Data Center in the Fitchburg Technology Campus near Madison, Wisconsin. CDW Berbee, a proven partner for IT solutions, will be TEAM’s anchor tenant in the new center. Berbee also participated in the groundbreaking. “This is more than a ‘dirt-turning’ event,” TEAM Companies’ VP-Development Mark Kittrell says. “This groundbreaking is another major step for the Madison area, adding capabilities to a region that is already an innovation hotbed for Information Technology.”

TEAM Companies is based in Cedar Falls, Iowa, where it built its first data center five years ago. Kittrell says the new center in the Fitchburg Technology Campus and TEAM’s collaboration with CDW Berbee adds further proof that the Upper Midwest is becoming ‘the’ place to build data centers. “September 11th changed the way we approach things,” Kittrell says. “Prior to that, most businesses located in data centers in areas such as New York, the Research Triangle or Silicon Valley. Today, they look for safer regions, with better access to power and fiberoptics to locate their data centers. We believe locating in the Upper Midwest provides that ideal location for us, and, in turn, for our customers.”

The “never been done before” approach

TEAM Companies chose Fitchburg, Wisconsin, as a location for a new data center because of its proximity to Chicago and Milwaukee. In an emergency, most IT directors still want to be close to their servers. Madison and its suburb of Fitchburg are close and yet far enough to be a perfect location for this type of facility; it allows clients to store their data “off site” from their offices, but it’s also close enough for them to get to their servers within an hour or two. Fitchburg also has plentiful and relatively inexpensive power. These two factors, coupled with Berbee’s headquarters in Fitchburg, led TEAM to choose the Fitchburg Technology Campus.

“We’re building a data center in a place no one else has ever built one,” says Kittrell. He’s referring to the fact that the campus is also a mixed-use area designed so that residents can walk or ride bikes to work. The Fitchburg Technology Campus is a hometown neighborhood of condominiums, homes, restaurants, a coffee shop, office buildings, and soon – a data center.

“We were immediately attracted to the atmosphere in this technology park in Fitchburg because it has a real sense of place,” says Kittrell. Fitchburg is also attractive because other growing technology companies, such as Berbee, are located there. TEAM Companies offers clients an alternative to building and operating their own data centers, and in conversations with Berbee learned that they were nearly out of space and had significant plans for growth. “We couldn’t ask for a better anchor tenant for our new facility,” Kittrell says. “Berbee needs more data center space and we wanted to establish ourselves to better serve the Upper Midwestern market beyond the reach of our data center in Cedar Falls, Iowa.”

Proven Model

Kittrell says TEAM Companies is focusing specifically on markets like Madison in the Upper Midwest for growth. “We have a proven model in these safe, secondary markets,” says the
TEAM VP-Development. “We built our first data center in Cedar Falls about the time most people were saying ‘data what?’. We saw the need. We did our research, and now we’re
establishing ourselves regionally in these inherently safe, inexpensive markets with great utilities.” Space in the company’s first data center, located in the Cedar Falls Technology Park, is sold out. Enterprise customers and service providers currently use the facility as a primary data center and also for disaster recovery. “We have a proven method of designing, building and operating world-class data centers,” says Kittrell.

“We’re in the business of providing data center space for companies that don’t want to build their own,” Kittrell explains. The threat of terrorism and natural disasters has changed the way businesses handle their data. Also, regulatory laws such as Sarbanes/Oxley for public companies and HIPAA for the healthcare information strictly dictate how information has to be stored more securely than ever. Together these mean businesses are increasingly adding data center space or upgrading their current facilities.

“Traditionally when a company needs additional real estate they ask themselves do we build or do we lease the additional space?” says Kittrell. “Our specialization in data center space brings the lease option to companies that want to keep an expensive asset off their balance sheet or don’t want the day-to-day worries of managing this type of facility 24/7. TEAM data centers take full responsibility for security as well as critical power and cooling equipment.” The company also believes the timing for this type of development is right as research indicates that nearly half of all data centers in the U.S. are outdated right now. Kittrell says most companies will have to decide whether to update or replace their data centers within the next three years. “All of this adds up to the fact that we believe our data center in the Fitchburg Technology Campus is the right facility at the right time, just as our first center in Cedar Falls was,” explains Kittrell.