Expedient to Upgrade Memphis Data Center

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-based Expedient Data Centers undertaking a data center upgrade project in Memphis expected to cost about $5 million. The project is part of a flurry of expansions for the company, which added capacity at existing sites in several markets and broke ground on a new site in Columbus, Ohio, in September.

Expedient has requested a permit for an initial $2.8 million in renovations inside a former Hilton Hotel data center, Memphis Business Journal reported. This is its first data center in the southeastern U.S.

The company provides a range of cloud and colocation services. Most of the markets it operates in are secondary data center markets, such as Columbus, Cleveland, Indianapolis,Baltimore, and Pittsburgh.

Expedient has invested $22 million in data center expansions so far, recently finishing an expansion in Pittsburgh. It is investing the $5 million on renovation in Memphis as part of a close to $9 million investment overall in that market that will create 20 jobs.

All of these investments bring the total size of Expedient’s footprint to 250,000 square feet.

The provider is renting the property from North Carolina-based Five 9s Digital. Five 9s, a data center development and advisory firm, acquired the property and close to 4.5 acres from Hilton for $3.7 million. The two companies have a longstanding relationship.

The 35,000 square foot Memphis facility is expected to open by July following the data center upgrade with an initial 7,500 square feet of raised floor. It will provide data center services to local businesses as well as Memphis outsiders.

Expedient's Memphis data center. Legend: 1. 35,000 sq ft. total space 2. 7,500 sq. ft. initial raised floor 3. Operations support center 4. (2) KVA power feeds from 2 substations 5. (4) 338 KVA UPS 6. 450 Tons Cooling (Source: Expedient)

“We believe the Memphis market will be a great complement to our existing network of interconnected data centers,” said Expedient Chief Operating Officer Shawn McGorry in the initial Memphis expansion announcement in October. “It will bring an additional geographically diverse option for our current client base, as well as a local market solution for the attractive and growing Memphis commercial sector.”

There are not many multi-tenant data center providers in Memphis. One competitor is Zayo Group’s zColo.

Given it’s the southeast, the market is threatened by at least one type of natural disaster. Tennessee is prone to tornadoes though the vast majority of instances are outside of Memphis. Another potential threat is flooding, with the famous Grand Ole Opry suffering a lot of damage in 2010.