HP Plans $100M Colorado Data Center

HP is seeking approval to build a 250,000 square foot data center on its campus in Colorado Springs, and may add a second data center on the property, according to local media. The company filed plans April 14 to build a two-story data center next to its three-building, 1.1 million-square-foot complex on Rockrimmon Boulevard and said its plans include a "potential two-story addition to the north that would also be for data center use." HP already operates several older data centers at the complex.

The project is the latest in a series of new data centers built by HP to modernize its data center infrastructure. The company recently completed a data center consolidation project in which applications and gear from 85 company-operated data centers were consolidated into six data centers in three cities. As part of the project, the company built pairs of 200,000 square foot data centers in Atlanta, Austin and Houston.

Looking beyond the US, HP's EDS unit is building a 300,000 square foot data center in Wynyard Park, England. When completed, the facility will use fresh air "free cooling" for up to 97 percent of its runtime, according to Bonnie Nixon, HP's Director of Environmental Sustainability, who described the facility's energy efficiency features at the recent Uptime Symposium 2009. The EDS Wynyard Park site will also use cold aisle containment, groundwater recovery to reduce water impact, and light grey racks in the data center to reflect more light and reduce the energy required for lighting (see What Color is Your Cabinet for more on this trend) .   

The planned HP facility in Colorado Springs center would be the fourth major data center opened or expanded in the Springs since 2006, including a facility Verizon Wireless is building in a former semiconductor plant, a FedEx Corp. data center and a facility for Progressive Corp./Drive Group that opened in 2006.