It’s one expensive prescription: $650 Million data center to be housed in what was a Pfizer plant. At a feverish pace, the data center plan was revealed, and groundbreaking began on Wednesday, March 5th.
The company building the center: Steel ORCA, located the site just 40 miles from major hubs: Philadelphia and the biggest of all U.S. cities, New York City – in Monmouth Junction, NJ. Banking that the location will attract NYC’s major financial companies, will bring services to its clients in “less than a millisecond”, as the information is transfer via phone and cable-based-fiber connections.
According to the company’s CEO and Chairman, Dave Crocker: “We’re a carrier hotel; all the major (Internet) suppliers have fiber through here.” He says “hundreds” will work at the site once its built out, which is good news for the area who was hit hard by the Pfizer plant closure.
Giants Tyco and Dell will provide physical and data security.
Plus the site aims to be a “green” data center, employing the head of a National Science Foundation-backed energy-efficiency project, based at the center, Villanova University’s Alfonso Ortega who will concentrate on ways to recycle heat and power, since “data centers consume 2% of the world’s electricity,” said Crocker.
Strategically place not just for its proximity to NYC’s financial district, but it sits on a 45 Megawatt power grid. Additionally, it has solar-powered- backups and solid-oxide fuel cells, as well as, battery backups for a hopefully, no down time data center. In the midst of Hurricane Sandy, many data centers‘ power went out, along with the backup generators. Steel ORCA hopes to make sure that they do not leave their clients stranded without data or access to it.
ORCA stands for Ownership, Responsibility, Commitment and Action, and is backed by 75 investors, including ex-Microsoft employees and a veteran builder of data centers, COO Dennis Cronin, who is active on the 7X24 Exchange.
The prognosis for this patient seems not only good, but a multi-use cure: the data center will employ hundreds of workers, while working to keep the amount of electricity it uses down.
