As 1102 GRAND continues to grow at a rapid pace, I wanted to take a moment to share with you a couple pictures I took of our new private cage colocation area.  In this new space we have designed the cages modularly to accommodate different sizes of colocation footprints.  Typically there are four 12’x12’ cages, but we can configure the space to a 12’x24’, 12’x36’ or even a 12’x48’ space.  This allows us and our clients the flexibility to have the space to expand in a contiguous fashion or to accommodate anticipated growth.  There is also a 12’x22’ space available in this area.

This space is similar to our other colocation areas within our SSAE16 Type 2 facility.  Clients will find multi-factor security authentication, gas-based fire suppression, N+1 HVAC, UPS and generator supported power feeds, the ability to connect to any of the 30+ carriers/providers in our Meet Me Room, along with a multitude of other features.

In addition to this expansion, we have begun work on two other floors within our building for anticipated colocation/datacenter growth.  If you are in the area and want to schedule an appointment for the “GRAND” tour, feel free to email me at Greg@1102Grand.com.  I welcome the opportunity to share what we have been building here.

Thank you to Processor Magazine for featuring Kansas City data center 1102 GRAND as a “Company to Watch” in the Jan. 13 issue. Three reasons 1102 GRAND was chosen as a Company to Watch are:

• Location of the colocation facility
• Housing a large network of providers for customers
• One-on-one attention to customers without a middle man

All of us at 1102 GRAND truly appreciate the publicity Processor Magazine has given our company.

Read the article: Colocation on a Grand Scale

If location is a defining factor in selecting a colocation provider, 1102 Grand (www.1102grand.com) has a leg up on the competition. Located in Kansas City’s Financial District, the company’s building is a hub for numerous cross-country fiber routes passing through 1102 Grand’s carrier neutral Meet Me Room—a fact that makes 1102 Grand able to provide customers strategic advantages other colocation providers in the region cannot.

“The building serves as a major hub for voice and data traffic in the region by providing a facility with the necessary infrastructure for carriers, service providers, and commercial customers to conduct network-related business together reliably and cost-effectively,” says Greg Elliott, director of business development at 1102 Grand. 1102 Grand is situated directly on Kansas City’s major metropolitan fiber ring, leading top-light telecommunications companies (Level 3, Verizon Business, and AT&T included) and regional carriers, service providers, and enterprise customers to build and operate data centers, nodes, and/or POPs (Points of Presence) at 1102 Grand.

“These tenants then extend their desired connectivity media (fiber, coax, copper, etc.) into our carrier-neutral Meet Me Room to interconnect with one another and provide services to other entities,” Elliott says.

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Here are some of the key takeaways:

1. Checking the redundancy level in place for HVAC, UPSes, PDus and other components

2. Requesting incident logs, maintenance records, etc.

3. Inquiring about what programs and contracts are in place for the data center infrastructure

To learn more about 1102 GRAND’s services, including colocation, call Greg at (816) 471-7872.

Read the article: Choose A Colocation Provider: Areas To Address When Narrowing The Field

Getting it right the first time is crucial when selecting a colocation provider, says Darin Stahl, Info-Tech Research Group lead analyst. For example, SMEs that move equipment into a provider’s space only to have to switch providers shortly after due to lack of foresight will pay a heavy price. “When you get into a colocation, switching costs are enormous,” he says. “This isn’t like buying a bunch of photocopiers, being unhappy with them, and putting them to the curb and getting new Xeroxes in. It’s a big deal to go through switching.” To find a good fit with a colocation provider, consider the following.

✔Acquire Enough Power & Space
Power and space are among the most important factors when judging providers. Where space is concerned, Clive Longbottom, service director of business process facilitation at Quocirca, says to ask yourself what you’re trying to accomplish, whether it’s to move existing or new workloads out of the data center or phase the data center out completely. If you expect to need additional physical space later, he says, get enough initially or negotiate with the provider to leave space around your area to avoid a forklift move from one part of the facility to another. This may cost more upfront, he says, but it will have less impact on the business later.

Greg Elliott, director of business development at 1102 Grand (www.1102grand.com), says checking the redundancy level in place for HVAC, UPSes, PDUs, and other components is also vital. “Not having enough redundancy for your organization’s particular requirements could be catastrophic if there was an outage,” he says; conversely, “paying for too much redundancy is likely to cause an organization to overpay for their colocation presence,” he says. Elliott advises requesting incident logs, maintenance records, etc., to determine how well the facility is run. “Based on meetings and facility tours I have been part of, people rarely inquire about what preventative maintenance programs and contracts are in place for the data center infrastructure,” he says.

As for power, Stahl says pricing is increasingly becoming variable. “It used to be I could go in and get a rack and I would know that for $340 a month or whatever the flat fee was, I had A-side, B-side power and this much commit,” he says. “Increasingly, though, vendors are enacting power-variation pricing clauses as frequently as quarterly to say, ‘Look, if I get a price increase from my supplier, I’m going to pass this on to you anywhere from 4 to 10%, and I’ll do that on a quarterly basis.’” In such cases, Stahl says obtaining fullmetered pricing can mean paying less.

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As some of you may have heard or seen, 1102 GRAND is experiencing considerable growth within our collocation business. We would like to thank our existing and new customers for their ongoing business and support as well as all of our friends in the community that keep sending new companies our way. As a result of the growth, 1102 GRAND has been building out data center spaces non-stop this year, and this will continue for at least six more months. The first phase of the 9th floor is scheduled to open November 1st, and is already fully leased. In addition, the 5th floor that opened October 1st has just three cages remaining. This past week our crews started work on another 8500 square feet of caged collocation space that will be completed Q1 2012.

Greg Elliott, director of business development at 1102 GRAND, said that collocation growth has come from a wide range of industry verticals. “Heavy growth is coming from hosting and cloud providers as well as continued demand from healthcare IT companies. In addition to regional customers, the trend of east and west coast customers looking at Kansas City for more affordable data center solutions is contributing to the expansion,” said Elliott.

If you would like to schedule time to see the new spaces or tour the building, contact Greg Elliott at 816-213-7731 or Greg@1102Grand.com.

I ran across this article on CIOInsight.com on the prediction that hardware spending will reach $99 billion this year. At 1102 GRAND we are definitely seeing evidence of this spending on a daily basis. We are watching customers moving gear into newly built out collocation rooms within our building, as well as existing customers adding new or upgrading existing equipment. The growth appears to span many different verticals, but web hosting, managed IT service companies, healthcare IT and call centers are definitely the front-runners this year at 1102 GRAND.

Gartner: Data Center Hardware Spending to Hit $99B in 2011

Who says the future of IT is all in software? All software has to run on some sort of processor, physical or virtual, and all those have to run on something you can see and touch. And with the continuing deluge of data pouring into servers and storage arrays, there is no shortage of processors happening anytime soon.

Thus, IT hardware sales are going nowhere but up and to the right. Gartner has some new numbers that back up this trend.

The industry researcher is projecting that worldwide data center hardware spending will reach $98.9 billion by the end of calendar year 2011, up 12.7 percent from $87.8 billion in 2010, according to a report it published Oct. 13. Data center hardware spending is forecast to total $106.4 billion in 2012 and surpass $126.2 billion in 2015.

Data center hardware spending includes servers, storage and enterprise data center networking equipment.

Back to Pre-Downturn Levels
“Worldwide data center hardware spending will finally reach and surpass 2008 levels,” said Jon Hardcastle, research director at Gartner. “Growth in emerging regions particularly Brazil, Russia, India and China (the BRIC countries) is balanced by continued weakness relative to pre-downturn levels in Japan and Western Europe.”

Storage is the main driver for growth, Hardcastle said. “Although only a quarter of data center hardware spending is on storage, almost half of the growth in spending will be from the storage market,” he said.

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Event Date and Location
2011 Technology Entrepreneur Speakers Program: Testing Your Business Idea- Frequently Overlooked Questions
Tuesday, October 18 from 5:30-7:00 p.m.
Polsinelli Shughart PC
Kansas City, MO
$25 Advanced Registration. $30 On-Site Registration

Testing Your Business Idea- Frequently Overlooked Questions
For the final program of the year, hear from featured speaker, Cason Coplin, Chief Executive Officer at EcoFit Lighting, on five key areas to investigate for starting and growing your business.

Attendees will learn about:
• Market validation
• Product viability
• Financial support
• Management talent
• Execution capability

REGISTER NOW

Apple is everywhere, especially this week with the tragic passing of Steve Jobs and the release of the iPhone 4S. Even our hometown wireless provider, Sprint Nextel, will finally have the iPhone available mid-October. Phil Poje and his new company, Tech Orchard, recently launched into the Apple game as well. Phil has always been a great proponent of 1102 GRAND and we are excited to hear about his new venture. I had a chance to catch up with Phil this week to ask him a few questions about Tech Orchard and why he chose to start a business in the Kansas City Area.

Tell us about your new company.

Tech Orchard purchases and finds new homes for used iPhones and iPads; thus reducing landfills and overflowing desk drawers. Sellers can get cash or can donate the money to their favorite charity with Tech Orchard matching 10% to the same charity. www.techorchard.com
Tech Orchard will also assists organizations with the purchase, leasing, renting, and management of 1-1,000 iPads and/or iPhones. Our services will include, but not limited to implementation, security issues (data encryption), integration, iPad app development, and training.

Who are your clients?

Tech Orchard partners with individuals, businesses, healthcare, and educational institutions in purchasing pre-owned iPads and iPhones; then re-selling them after being refurbished.

What value do you offer your customers?

Tech Orchard buys old iPads and iPhones, and makes sure that any important data is securely erased. We provide cash back in order to purchase new equipment. Customers can feel good that the devices are being re-use or recycled responsibly.

Why are you in Kansas City?

I was born in Kansas City Missouri, raised in Kansas City Kansas, graduated from University of Missouri-Kansas City and have lived on both sides of the state line. The vibrant K.C. region is a great place to live, work and raise a family. The friendly Mid-western culture and variety of intellectual, sports and recreational activities make this a wonderful place to call home and build a business.

What is the best part of doing business in Kansas City?

The friendly culture of Kansas City along with the strong work ethic makes our city great for doing business. In addition, KC has recently been ranked among the best in the nation in terms of its IT work force. We have many innovative companies; and organizations like Google and others are recognizing the value our city and region has for them.

What are the benefits of working in Kansas City?

Smart people! Great educational institutions like KU Medical Center, UMKC, KU, K-State, Avila, Baker, Park College, DeVry and a stellar group of junior colleges. Also, we enjoy having many organizations like KC Next, SITAKS, KCIT Professionals, EDC of KC, ECJC, Kansas Pipeline, KCADC, Kauffman Foundation, Start KC and many others who are helping businesses like ours grow and prosper. At Tech Orchard, we are proud and privileged to be part of the Kansas City region.

What are the financial or economic incentives to living in Kansas City or the metro area?

Low cost of living, great communities, strong workforce, good infrastructure, and ease of transportation are a few of the financial/economic incentives of being based in Kansas City. In addition, we are developing a good community of investors who strive to re-investing back in new area companies.

How does someone get in touch with Tech Orchard to learn more?

Direct inquiries to Phil Poje, CEO, phil@techorchard.com

As I read the article, In the Pipeline: A Tidal Wave of Data, I started thinking about how much data I generate on a given day. I send tons of emails and texts, make pandora selections, tweet, post on LinkedIn, make charges on my debit and credit cards, utilize smart phone apps, make calls…well, you get the idea. Then I look at my children, who are better multi-taskers than I am, doing online homework from their laptops while simultaneously texting friends and downloading apps on their iPads. It is obvious that we will continue to generate more data, especially with the availability and affordability of increased internet capacity and speeds.

In the article, James Kobielus of Forrester predicted that storage will continue to increase at a more affordable cost, thus gaining my attention. He said, “By the end of the decade, petabytes of storage will live in the palm of your hand.” A blog post from Mozy.com in 2009 did a great job of illustrating what a petabyte looks like: 1,000,000 gigabytes equals a petabyte, or 13.3 years of HD-TV Video!

It will be interesting to see if Kobielus’ prediction comes true, but one thing is clear, more data is coming and we better be ready.

Thank you to all the golfers, sponsors and Deer Creek Golf Club for another successful golf tournament and IT networking event. The competition was fierce yet friendly and great connections were made.

Congratulations to the winners:
1st Place- Bluebird Network: Mike Brigman, Steve Crane, Don Gehringer and Scott Brown
2nd Place- K&W Underground: Rex Schick, Bill Reidy, Scott Plumb and Dwight Davis
3rd Place- Gary Kapperman, George Porta, Wayne Walker and Connie Walker

Longest Drive- Wayne Walker
Longest Putt- Bill Reidy
Closest to the Pin- DJ Good

Thank you again to our tournament sponsors: Rockefeller Group Technology Solutions (RGTS), K&W Underground, Stanger Industries, Lantel, Time Warner Business Class, KNK Telecom, Westhues Electric, Boulevard Brewery, Clayman Promotions, and Centriq IT Training. We couldn’t have done it without your generosity!