Hostway Plans New Chicago Data Center

Hostway will build a new data center in Chicago to accommodate strong customer growth, the company said today. The new facility will be located in the Boeing building, along the west bank of the Chicago River, in a space originally built out by SBC at a cost of $200 million.

Hostway, a major web hosting provider, said it will invest $10 million in additional improvements to customize the property for its needs. Hostway said a significant portion of that investment will be used to upgrade the facility's power and cooling plant to prepare for high density server installations. Hostway, which now has 14 data centers worldwide, will use 50,000 of data center space in the first phase of its build-out, with additional expansion to follow as demand warrants.

"Our Web hosting and managed services business for enterprise customers is growing rapidly and the cooling and power capacity requirements are rising faster than anything the industry predicted," said Lucas Roh, CEO of Hostway. "The new datacenter will incorporate the latest design techniques and enable Hostway to continue to provide a fast, reliable and secure hosting environment for our customers."

Customer server installations are expected to be operational by June 2006. The facility will also accommodate custom build-outs for customers requiring specialized solutions. With geographically dispersed datacenters, Hostway is able to offer disaster recovery and geographic load balancing solutions.

"This new datacenter, along with our expansion in both Europe and Asia, further solidifies our worldwide leadership position in the managed hosting space," said Roh.