Michigan Colo Provider Adds New Data Center

Online Technologies Corporation has opened a 10,500 square foot data center in Avis Farms, a technology park near Ann Arbor, Michigan. The Avis Data Center will house Online Technologies' growing colocation, dedicated server and managed service customers, primarily small and mid-sized businesses in Michigan and the Great Lakes region.

"We take a long term view towards the data center market and see this as an ideal time to bring additional capacity online," said Bob Palmerton, Chief Financial Officer of Online Technologies. "The current economic environment provides us the opportunity to gain significant cost advantages through acquisitions that can last the next decade."

The new data center is designed for high availability applications that need to be always-on and always connected to the Internet. The network infrastructure offers similar high availability with two dedicated gigabit fiber connections between the Avis Data Center and Online Technologies' other data centers in downtown Ann Arbor and Flint Township. The network has a redundant Cisco network architecture and is connected to multiple Tier1 Internet suppliers.

With the addition of its third corporate-owned data center, Online Technologies has a unique advantage with its multiple data centers dispersed across Southeast Michigan. With a common network infrastructure, the three data centers are knit together into one "virtual data center." This gives clients the ability to locate their primary data center in one of Online Technologies' sites and their disaster recovery equipment in a separate data center separated by 50 miles and different power grids, yet function as if they were in the same data center.

Online Technologies has data centers in downtown Ann Arbor in Flint Township. With addition of the Avis Data Center, Online Technologies has grown from a single 800 square foot data center in 2003 to four data centers with a combined total of more than 40,000 square feet. OTC also leases data center space from a partner in Southfield for its clients requiring service closer to the Detroit area.