SecureData365 will expand into the Cleveland Technology Center with a $2 million investment and a plan to capture work now sent out of state. Watch video
A rendering of the Cleveland Technology Center on Rockwell Avenue now being renovated by ByteGrid. SecureData 365 plans to start operations in the complex in March. CANTON, Ohio -- Northeast Ohio has the trappings of fast and efficient digital communications--including access to fiber optic highways and relatively cheap, reliable power. Yet most corporate and commercial data centers have been built elsewhere.
SecureData 365, a Canton-area technology pioneer, thinks the tide is turning and it intends to ride the wave. The five-year-old company will soon expand its operations to Cleveland, becoming the largest tenant in the re-emerging Cleveland Technology Center downtown.
Company executives say they plan to invest $2 million initially to create Ohio's most advanced data center and that their customers will invest $50 million more in equipment.
"We think we have the right model at the right time," said Michael Campanelli, the company's executive vice president.
By running two nearby data centers on separate power grids, SecureData expects to lure back local companies that have been sending their digital information elsewhere to be managed and protected.
It's a plan that could speed Cleveland into a rapidly growing industry, experts say.
A data center, sometimes described as a company brain, houses information technology systems. It's a bright, cool, secluded place humming with servers stacked in rows of tall, narrow black cabinets.
Data Centers, while bristling with technology, are purposely designed to draw little attention. This is the headquarters of SecureData 365 in suburban Canton. Those servers monitor website traffic, store and backup digital information and direct computer networks running miles or several states away.
Once, most big companies operated their own data centers, often on site. As the technology has grown more powerful, and the data more critical to company operations, many have come to rely on private data centers built to serve large enterprises.
That's the industry SecureData 365 entered in 2009.
Bringing data back home
Initially, chief executive Ernie Blood sought an IT hub for his real estate marketing firm, Delta Media Group. Soon, companies large and small were asking for server space. Blood and his partners had built big enough to oblige.
"We thought there was a market here and we were right," said Blood, an entrepreneur who has helped found several businesses, including AutoTrader magazine.
Most area businesses in need of data management were sending the task out of state, there being few local options, said Campanelli, who designed data centers for AT&T before Blood hired him to run SecureData.
They would prefer having their sensitive information closer to home, within reach of their IT staff, Campanelli said.
Blood and his partner, Tim Barta, saw Greater Cleveland's potential.
Connection to fiber optic cable networks and lower energy costs meant a data center could be both powerful and relatively cheap to run here. Meanwhile, there was little chance of an earthquake or a hurricane destroying the place and irreplaceable data being lost.
SecureData built a data center in a suburban retail strip just outside of Canton and began signing up clients.
University Hospitals was one of the first on board. It brought home servers and software from Tennessee, Campanelli said. Cleveland Cliffs and PolyOne Corp. followed.
SecureData has added, on average, one customer a month and now serve nearly 70 clients, Campanelli said. Revenues are expected to reach $3 million this year.
The company has fielded many requests to offer its service in downtown Cleveland, Campanelli said. Last year, an opportunity presented itself.
A Virginia company called Bytegrid bought the Cleveland Technology Center, a dated telecommunications center on Rockwell Avenue near East 18th Street. The unassuming brick colossus sits above a fiber optic corridor running from Chicago to New York City.
ByteGrid, a data center wholesaler, announced plans to build the framework of a state-of-the-art data center and lease space to tenants.
SecureData recently signed on as a marque tenant, a ByteGrid spokesman confirmed.
According to the Canton model, SecureData will lease space in its portion of the center to companies and institutions that will move in their own equipment. SecureData will manage the complex, monitor the equipment and ensure backup power and security.
"We expect to become a destination," Campanelli said on a tour of the Canton data center. "We're taking the model we built here, which is very successful, and bringing it to Cleveland."
Already, four major customers have committed to the new center, he said, declining to name them.
Economic impact hazy but hopeful
While SecureData expects to continue to grow, the impact on Cleveland's economy is less clear.
For all their million-dollar equipment, data centers employ relatively few people. ByteGrid is required by a state tax exemption to create 20 jobs. SecureData plans to staff its Cleveland center with a crew of six.
Still, economic development specialists are hopeful for more. The power of a data center is in its multiplier effects, said Jay Foran, a senior vice president for Team NEO, the regional business attraction agency.
According to Campanelli, 300 engineers will be credentialed to work in the new facility. They will be part of the expanding IT staff of companies moving their data management to Cleveland, he said.
"It's the indirect employees you need to count with a data center," Foran said.
"You're bringing a lot of the intelligence of a company" back to the area, he said. "These companies will go out there and hire people to do this work."
Both Campanelli and Foran see an industry that's a good match for Cleveland.
Foran cites the size of the region's healthcare and bioscience industries, both of which generate massive amounts of data that must be stored an analyzed.
Campanelli, ever the data center designer, points to the large number of sturdy, mostly empty buildings that served as telecommunications hubs in an earlier era.
He sees lots of "old carrier space" ready for the big switch.
Robert L. Smith covers economic development and the new economy for The Plain Dealer. Follow him on Twitter @rlsmithpd.