A server farm in the City
Perimeter Technology Center broke ground Monday on a multi-million dollar development that will some day be home to thousands of computer servers. The popular term is “server farm,” and in this instance the title seems to fit.
That’s because the ceremony was held on 15 acres of undeveloped ground located to the west of the current Perimeter Technology Center in northwest Oklahoma City.
It looked very much like pastureland that someone should have been hauling hay out of this summer. Maybe they did.
Perimeter bought the acreage plus six more immediately south of the Perimeter Technology building for which it has developed a long-range plan.
The sight of what amounts to a large pasture in the heart of the metro just off a busy boulevard like NW 39 surprised me as I watched the ceremony Monday afternoon. I have been to Perimeter Technology Center several times over the past few years and never noticed the big undeveloped space next door.
“We have been here for 10 years in this building, and didn’t start paying attention to this land until about a year ago,” said Stan Chase, Perimeter’s chief operating officer. “Never even thought about it, at all.”
Then they discovered it could be bought at what they considered a reasonable price just as their current data center next door was approaching capacity.
Now the land belongs to the seven Perimeter partners and a long-range plan has been developed to turn it into a data center part.
Monday’s groundbreaking, which featured Lt. Gov. Jari Askins as the keynote speaker, was for the first of up to 10 buildings planned in the development.
Perimeter Technology Center was created about four years ago in an existing data center once occupied by the former Williams Communications.
Five partners, Chase, Terry Morrison, Heath Rutz, Russ Koch and Todd Currie, all worked for Williams and had helped build and operate the data center when they worked for a predecessor to Williams Communications called Rock Island.
After the demise of Williams they created a business called Anodyne Technologies that operated the center. Parsons and Brad Thomas joined the group in 2004 when they created Perimeter Technology Center to operate it as a commercial data center.
Perimeter expanded to a second location Tulsa last year, but the growing demand in Oklahoma City prompted the development that culiminated in Monday’s groundbreaking. Perimeter envisions clients commissioning it to build and manage data centers specifically for them.
“That’s really what we see taking place here,” Chase said. “Having more and more companies saying ‘I want to build a data center for my company only and keep my stuff there, but we want you to build it and manage it.’ ”
Jim Stafford
Business Writer
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