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Area Development - Site Selection, Facility Planning and Workforce Development

CenturyLink Opens Data Center In Moses Lake, Washington

05/13/2015
A global communications, hosting, cloud and IT services company, CenturyLink, Inc. opened its new data center in Moses Lake, Washington. The company is adding hydro-electric-powered data center services to its hybrid IT services portfolio.

"CenturyLink's new low-cost power data center services provide many benefits to our customers, including a highly resilient solution coupled with power costs and efficiency metrics that rank among the best in the industry, and the facility serves as an excellent disaster recovery location," said David Meredith, Senior Vice President, CenturyLink. "Enterprises enjoy global access to CenturyLink's portfolio of cloud and managed hybrid IT services, and we continue to extend the reach of our data center footprint to new markets to meet from the needs of our customers."

The data center, located in Central Washington on property owned by Server Farm Realty and leased to CenturyLink, will ultimately support up to 30 megawatts of IT load on the site, with an initial ramp to 8 megawatts. Company officials explained that the facility's electricity is supplied, in part, by hydroelectric generators powered by the nearby Columbia River. The central Washington climate also allows significant use of free-air cooling, driving some of the lowest power usage effectiveness figures in the data center industry.

The central Washington facility offers on-site data center and network services, and includes access to cloud, colocation and managed services available through CenturyLink's global data center footprint. The site also has a seismic rating of 2B, the lowest rating in the western United States, making it a key location for disaster recovery solutions.

"The central part of Washington state is one of the geographies in which I see substantial potential for further growth as a data center hub," said Kelly Quinn, Research Manager with IDC. "Its potential stems from the area's abundance of natural, power-generating resources, and its relative immunity from natural disasters. The location should help enable CenturyLink's new data center to provide customers with the ability to achieve higher levels of density without incurring high power costs. It also may offer customers who are 'green' conscious the ability to work with a provider that can satisfy their data center needs with renewable energy sources."

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