Expedient Reopens Former Hilton Data Center in Memphis as Colo

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-based Expedient has opened a new Memphis data center following close to $9 million worth of upgrades. Expedient provides managed hosting, cloud, and colocation services.

The 35,000-square-foot facility used to be a Hilton Hotels enterprise data center. The company updated the data center and is holding a grand opening later this week. This is the eleventh data center in Expedient’s portfolio across seven cities.

Expendient currently operates in several secondary markets, including Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Indianapolis, Columbus, Boston, Baltimore, and now also Memphis. The company said Memphis was chosen because of local-company needs.

Memphis is one of many sizable metro areas across the country without a big colocation provider presence. Zayo's zColo is one of the few other providers in the metro. These cities do have legacy enterprise data centers that are potential candidates for acquiring by service providers and refurbishing as the local market for colocation grows.

Both local businesses looking to outsource for the first time as well as the growth of the edge (desire to serve content close to metro populations) are driving colocation growth beyond the traditional markets.

Memphis also complements the company's other facilities and provides the company with its southernmost presence.

"We are excited to show the local Memphis community the finished data center and how it can help solve their most pressing IT infrastructure problems," Jim Kothe, mid-south VP for Expedient, said in a statement. "We've already hired several people from Memphis in our support center, sales and engineering teams and will continue to do so as we grow."

Expedient announced the Memphis data center upgrades early this year. The facility’s first phase includes 7,500 square feet of raised floor production space and is connected to the company’s 10 other data centers.

The company broke ground on its $50-million-plus data center in Dublin, Ohio, last September. The facility is expected to open in November.

Expedient completed an expansion of its Pittsburgh data center at the Allegheny Center Mall in late 2014.