Oracle Breaks Ground on Utah Project

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The planned Oracle Utah Compute Center in West Jordan, Utah

Oracle Corp. (ORCL) broke ground Friday on its new "compute center" in West Jordan, Utah, and hinted that local employment could exceed initial estimates. The $285 million facility will feature a 179,000 square foot data center, and is projected to employ 100 workers.

"We're putting a lot of money in it and quite a few employees," Oracle President Safra Catz said at the groundbreaking, which was covered by the Deseret News. "What I always find is that every once in a while we'll go somewhere and I'll think we're going to add, you know, 100 employees and before I know it, we've got a thousand... So I expect I'll be here when they're talking about even more space."

Oracle calls the facility "Project Sequoia" and says it will have three times the server density of its current flagship data center in Austin, Texas, but will use far less energy. CIO Mark Sunday discussed the facility at length in a keynote presentation at the Next-Generation Data Center, and said that Oracle will use air-side economizers and hot-aisle containment to help control energy usage. The dry air in Utah will allow Oracle to use outside air for cooling, even when the exterior temperature reaches 85 degrees.

The state of Utah offered Oracle a tax rebate of more than $15 million, and local government incentives are expected to total nearly $10 million. The facility is expected could result in $73.6 million in new wages over 10 years and $50.4 million in new state revenue over 12 years.