DataBank Moves Up the Stack, Adds Managed Services

DataBank-richardson-hallway

The interior of DataBank’s new North Dallas data center, featuring a data hall on the left and office space and conference rooms on the right. (Photo: DataBank)

Custom data center and colocation provider DataBank is moving up the stack a bit, announcing new managed services and Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) capabilities. The managed services are part of the next phase in their strategy, along with an ongoing geographic expansion.

The new suite of service offerings include security services and enhance client visibility of their colocated IT equipment housed within the company’s facilities. The rollout includes an expansion of data collection and monitoring with the addition of DCIM, “IT Stack” monitoring tools, and security solutions for Threat Management, Log Management, Scanning, and Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) mitigation.

"DataBank delivers the very highest-level infrastructure and environments in the markets we serve, and layering in these new services was a logical extension to our portfolio," said Mike Gentry, DataBank VP of Operations at DataBank. "We are responding to customer demand and have moved forward with a number of best-in-class service partners to aid in the delivery of one-stop solution capabilities to enhance our end-user experience."

The DataBank building served as the main Federal Reserve Bank office in Dalas.  The building’s sturdy infrastructure, including generous floor loads and ceiling heights, provided an unusual opportunity to build the new economy in the footprint of the old. It has a strong power and power capacity story, residing on an extremely resilient portion of the Dallas power grid, known as the “700 Network,” and it has more power than space. It was using just 4 megawatts of 15 available when it was 85 percent full.

After eight years and nearly filling up 130,000 square feet of data center space in the original DataBank building, the company began extending its model – first in the Dallas metroplex, and then in other cities around the US. It opened a new data center in Richardson, Texas and acquired VeriSpace, a data center provider in St. Paul, Minnesota to this aim.

Private equity firm  Avista Capital acquired a majority interest in DataBank last year, and also sold the 400 South Akard Street property to Digital Realty Trust in a sale-leaseback transaction. This also led to the Richardson, Texas facility; Databank also leased a powered shell building from Digital Realty at its Digital Dallas campus in Richardson.