365 Data Centers Opens Nashville Technology Hub

365 Data Centers launched a Nashville technology hub for startups and upgraded its data center downtown. A ribbon cutting ceremony was held this week featuring the city's mayor Karl Dean.

The hub will give free colocation space, power, and Internet services to select local startups and businesses. The company’s 17,000 square foot data center has upgraded power, cooling, and uninterruptible power supplies. It has maintained 100 percent uptime in the past 10 years, said CEO John Scanlon. The Nashville technology hub is located at 147 Fourth Ave. N.

The company’s strategy is to serve small and mid-size businesses in second-tier markets. The colocation provider recently entered into the cloud storage business to further entice SMBs.

In Nashville, it is taking initiative by partnering with community to boost the local economy. 365 is an investor in Partnership 2020, the Nashville Area Chamber’s economic development initiative responsible for driving local business. It will provide some organizations in conjunction with P2020 with free and reduced-cost data center services.

"365 has proven to be an exceptional community member and partner for the chamber and our P2020 program," Judith Hill, vice president of business retention and expansion for the Chamber of Commerce, said. "Data centers and technology are well documented drivers of job and business growth, and 365's commitment to providing state-of-the-art colocation facilities and cloud services in downtown Nashville helps us tremendously to achieve our goals."

The company is also partnering with other local civic and business leaders, including Matt Wiltshire, director of the Mayor's Office of Economic and Community Development, and Bryan Huddleston, CEO of the Nashville Technology Council.

The carrier-neutral facility includes 17,000 square feet of developed colocation space, redundant power from Nashville Electric Service, three 225 kVA UPS systems, 1.25 megawatts of generator power, and 280 tons of cooling capacity.

Most of the data centers in the area are located outside of downtown. Compass Data Centers recently commissioned a facility in nearby Franklin, built using modular architecture. Windstream hosting was the customer.

Peak 10 entered the market in 2006 through acquisition of RenTech and has added a few facilities since. Carter Validus Mission Critical REIT performed a sale-leaseback of an AT&T facility in Brentwook last year. zColo has a data center located downtown.

A flood hit parts of Nashville during a Data Center World conference in 2010.