Colospace Opens Fifth New England Data Center

Managed hosting and colocation provider Colospace has opened its fifth data center in its core New Enlgand market. The facility in Rockland, Mass. will serve disaster recovery clients in Boston and managed hosting customers throughout the country, the company said. The facility was the former home to the American Automotive Association (AAA) of New England, and was refitted for modern data center requirements.

ColoSpace said it leased 20 percent of the data center space before the center's opening. "Two years ago we began our survey process to determine if a need existed in this part of the state," said CEO Wayne Sawchuk. "The data was astounding especially for organizations that dreaded driving to Boston and wanted a local alternative for their business. As a result we had companies waiting to move in day one."

The new facility uses existing dark fiber from the electric utility National Grid (NEESCom) and lit by high capacity communications provider OnFiber. By retrofitting its own facility, ColoSpace was able to customize the property to meet the power and heat management demands of high-density hosting environments. "An area ColoSpace will have as a competitive advantage is cooling and power," Sawchuk said. "Data centers built five years ago were designed for multiple 4-5U servers and now we're seeing multiple 7U Blade Server holding ten blades requiring expanded power and cooling. Our vision was to look at the market and quantify how many customers would be standardizing on Blade Servers and other smaller machines in the next five years. Taking this data into consideration and building a facility to meet future demands is where we see ColoSpace staying ahead of the competition."