Digital Signage Firm Buys Former EDS Data Center in Dayton

Stratacache, a company that specializes in infrastructure and content for digital signage, has acquired a big data center in Dayton, Ohio, which used to support multiple GM manufacturing plants.

It is an unusual move nowadays, when companies that provide services like Stratacache’s rely primarily on public cloud and other types of third-party infrastructure services instead of investing in their own data centers. But Stratacache management expects the investment to enable it to serve its customers better.

Chris Reigel, CEO, Stratacache:

The Dayton-based company provides three types of solutions, all geared to help customers manage the delivery of their digital marketing content: digital signage, content acceleration, and content distribution. It does everything from lighting up advertising displays on city streets to delivering content to TV screens in Costco stores.

The data center it acquired was built for EDS (Electronic Data Services), the professional services company founded in the early 60s by Ross Perot. In 1984 it was acquired by GM for $2.5 billion and later, in 2008, by Hewlett-Packard for $13.9 billion.

HP took ownership of 100 EDS data centers in that transaction, which it later whittled down to 50 through a big consolidation initiative.

The building in Dayton is huge. It has 113,000 square feet of raised floor and a network operations space that fits 550 support desks, which will be occupied by Stratacache’s primary global support and operations center. It also has three diesel generators, complete with underground fuel tanks, and dual utility feeds.

It will provide new data center capacity for a company growing quickly through acquisitions. In August it acquired Scala, another digital signage company, following acquisition of a digital outdoor menu board specialist called Vertigo in June. Last year, Stratacache bought PRN, which specializes in marketing via in-store displays.