Coming off its fifth year in a row of 30 percent plus annual growth, Online Technologies Corp. officials say they're enthusiastic about the company's data center business prospects in 2009.
Ann Arbor-based Online Tech made significant investments in its managed data center business in 2008, making it one of the largest independent managed data center operators in the state of Michigan.
To match its growth rate, the company added 10,000 square feet of data center space with its third data center brought on line in early 2008. Online Tech also added 10 employees to it payroll in 2008 to better support its rapidly growing customer base.
Online Tech now has two data centers in Ann Arbor -- downtown and in the Avis Park area -- and one in Genesee County, near Flint.
"The Midwest is a great place for a data center," said CEO Yan Ness.
That's because of a combination of factors -- cooler weather that cuts air conditioning costs, reasonable power costs, low on the probability charts for weather disaster and terror attacks, lots of available technology employees with corporate data center experience, and high wind power potential.
"It’s a no brainer for data centers that contain backup disaster recovery sites for corporations all across the country," Ness said.
A November report by Tier1 Research found that the global multi-tenant data center market continues to grow. Demand has increased 14 percent last year while data center supply was up only 6 percent. This demand/supply gap is projected to grow over the next three years. Despite a difficult economy, the Internet will continue to grow as a vehicle for service and application delivery, driving the demand for expanded data center space. Software as a service, managed hosting, social networking and streaming media will increase the demands for data center space and power.
The credit crunch, coupled with small and mid-size businesses’ reluctance to invest significant capital and operating expenses in private data centers, is also driving the demand for outsourced data centers and colocation. Rather than invest the capital to build or expand an in-house data center to meet their IT needs, many companies are sharing data center space by co-locating with others in multi-tenant managed data centers.
Online Tech has seen these same trends in the State of Michigan. As companies need to cut back on IT capital intensive projects and reduce operating costs in their data centers, colocation in multi-tenant data centers can provide a solution that requires no capital investment, i.e. “Cap-Ex Free” IT, and can often reduce operating expenses by leveraging outsourced data center specialists.
In one of the states hit the hardest by the economic downturn, Online Tech is finding increased demand for it’s managed data center solutions.
“In both periods of growth and periods of decline, there are business opportunities,” said Yan Ness, CEO of Online Tech. “It’s when everything is flat, that I go sailing. Right now, all we see is opportunity.”
More at www.onlinetech.com.
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