With large cloud computing providers Microsoft and Amazon calling the Seattle area home, and major data center wholesalers establishing footprints from Tukwila to Quincy, it might seem as though the market for IT infrastructure is well served. Yet, demand continues to increase faster than providers can fill it. As Green House Data looked to expand nationally, we saw an opportunity within Western Washington’s strong tech sector, connectivity at the Westin Building Exchange, and skilled labor base. Bringing our brand of sustainably powered infrastructure and high-touch customer service seemed like a natural fit for one of the nation’s top 10 data center markets.

Who is Green House Data?

I founded Green House Data with two friends and business partners back in 2007. We were discussing business ideas over coffee, and as we all had a background in IT, we recognized the opportunity in the data center industry. The main hurdles in getting started were locating a suitable site and securing the capital to fit it out how we wanted: not just for a reliable, cutting-edge server room, but also to be highly energy efficient. There was little talk of sustainability or green power in the industry at the time. We settled on Wyoming as our headquarters due to a number of factors, including the physical climate (good for data center cooling) and the business climate (tax incentives, an underserved market, and low costs for living and building alike). It wasn’t long before we were looking towards national expansion.

We started with cloud-only data center nodes in Portland, OR and Piscataway, NJ, which we used to deliver cloud services to coastal customers, as well as for disaster recovery for the central region. Going into 2014, we were set on expanding to Orangeburg, NY as an entry to the largest data center market in the world (New York City). While we had an eye on other large data center clusters like Arizona, Texas, and Illinois, demand on the coasts led us to start hunting for properties and potential acquisitions in the Pacific Northwest.

Why We Acquired FiberCloud

In late 2014, while one facility was under construction in downstate New York, we turned towards the west coast to gain a national reach, executing on our strategy to connect coast-to-coast data centers with a central headquarters in Cheyenne, Wyoming. A series of fortunate events brought us to terms with FiberCloud, a Seattle-based provider of data center services operating three facilities along the I-5 corridor.

There were a number of reasons to acquire FiberCloud, including three geographically separated data centers (Seattle, Everett, Bellingham). Our new colleagues in Washington are fitting in well as part of the Green House Data team, with IT skills and product expertise dovetailing nicely.

The staff demonstrated the type of hands-on, proactive service that Green House Data provides to customers across the United States. We see ourselves as an ideal infrastructure partner in Western Washington: able to provide fully managed services across the entire IT stack, from simple powered rack to help configuring a SharePoint server.

The Advantages of Washington for Data Centers

Green House Data now leases and operates three floors of the Westin Building Exchange, the third largest carrier hotel in the country. This facility is just one reason why Seattle is a major interconnection hub. There are two major interconnection points through which mind-boggling amounts of internet traffic pass, headed on to domestic and international markets alike: the Seattle Internet Exchange handles over 350 Gigabits per second. That’s equal to about nine thousand albums of music passing through every single second. In addition, Washington is a short hop to Canadian and Asia-Pacific markets, an advantage for serving international customers.

Seattle has long been a competitor to Silicon Valley in terms of sheer amount of technology companies, both giants and startups. Beyond Amazon and longtime eastsiders like Microsoft, there are strong internet companies like Zillow and Moz. They all need data center capacity, but IT infrastructure isn’t just for the tech crowd. Western Washington is home to diverse verticals from healthcare to retail to aerospace.

These companies, and now Green House Data, are fueled by a skilled labor base from a well-educated populace. Over half of Seattle’s residents hold a college degree. In addition to the companies and workers in the region, the location itself is highly advantageous to data centers.

The cost of power is fairly low in the area and renewable energy is popular, which is a major plus for our company, as we practice energy efficient, green operations and purchase 100% renewable energy. The mild, cool climate means we can use the outside air for efficient cooling year-round. (Amazon, our neighbor in the Denny Triangle, is also doing interesting things on the efficiency front that we can learn from. They’re going to pump waste heat from the Westin into their new office campus next door.)

Taken altogether, the market made perfect sense as an anchor to our West coast operations. We anticipate continued growth throughout the Pacific Northwest and are looking forward to working in the community.