Carrier-1: Leading The Way With Innovations In The Data Center Market

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Carrier-1 owns and operates a 106,866 square foot data center building in Dallas, Texas. The company recently announced the launch of Carrier-1 Cloud Connect. Carrier-1 has facilitated a reliable and simple way to bypass the Internet via security-enhanced connections to multiple cloud providers from its data center. To find out more, we sat down with Julia Morgan, Co-Founder and President at Carrier-1:

Q: Who is Carrier-1 in nutshell?

A: Ranked as one of the largest data centers in North Texas by the Dallas Business Journal, Carrier-1 Data Centers owns and operates a 106,866 square foot data center building in Dallas, Texas. Customers may lease wholesale colocation space within the building to utilize the redundant infrastructure and environment controls to maintain 100% uptime while receiving access to over 100 network carriers. The facility meets any compliant requirement including PCI, HIPAA and SOX. The management team and investors have funded, developed and managed over a half-million square feet of data center space with customers spanning the globe. Background of the founding partners includes; GTE, Cable and Wireless, Exodus Communications, The Planet and CoreXchange/ColoUnlimited.

Q: Tell us about the need for your services in your market?

A: Our timing is perfect. The North Texas market, Dallas in particular, is thriving right now. Regional office growth and major corporate headquarter relocations to our area means that more technology requirements are required to support them. At a time when data center supply is low in Dallas, Carrier-1 has a surplus of raised-floor data center and powered-shell space available now. Many other data center providers are looking to expand existing white-floor space in the market due to current capacity constraints and some large data center providers are moving into the market with green-field builds. Carrier- is positioned to handle any type of solution today as well as their future growth. Multiple racks, Virtual-PODs, private cages and powered shell space is currently available with plenty of space for expansion. There is an ample amount of colocation business to go around as Dallas Fort Worth is one of the top U.S. markets for data center demand.

Separately, the Internet of Things (IoT) is driving demand. As we continue to add automation and control to the way our machines work together, we become even more dependent on technology in our daily lives. Uptime is even more critical and the IoT will drive new business models. Data centers will be at the heart of all of this.

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Q: What is a Virtual-POD?

A: Designed for customers to pay as they grow and to fuel geographic diversity, a Virtual-POD offers dedicated colocation space with scalable power, private storage and smarter pricing. Customers typically want to turn up a colocation solution quickly and cost efficiently. Whether the business is looking to establish, expand or diversify their web infrastructure in North Texas, or they’ve simply run out of capacity at their current site, a Virtual-POD is ready to go with low risk. In contrast to traditional wholesale data center commitments with a megawatt minimum power requirement, Carrier-1’s Virtual-PODs provide the benefit of a megawatt price point without a megawatt commitment. Pay a small fee only for the racks and power may be added at any time, saving upfront costs. This is a good alternative to a caged solution that otherwise requires a customer to pay for more space than they need day one. A cage also locks them into a particular amount of space which could later prove to be too small. On-site locking storage bays are included with a full Virtual-POD, eliminating the need for a cage for storage purposes. Virtual-PODs can be added by cross connecting the new row to the original network rack, so scaling over time is easy.

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Q: You’ve recently announced the launch of Carrier-1 Cloud Connect; tell us something more?

A: Carrier-1 has facilitated a reliable and simple way to bypass the Internet via security-enhanced connections to multiple cloud providers from our data center. We partnered with Level 3 Cloud Connect and Equinix Cloud Exchange to provide direct connections to leading cloud providers including AWS, MS Azure, MS 365, Google Cloud, Digital Ocean, Bluejeans, HP Helion and Softlayer. Colocation tenants who utilize cloud solutions for themselves, or for their end users, receive direct and secure links to a hub of public and private clouds via our cloud-connect offering. They may easily incorporate their private infrastructure within the Carrier-1 data center while not sacrificing any computing efficiencies for their critical applications. Simply tell us who you need to connect to and we get you there – easily and cost effectively.

Q: What advantage does Carrier-1 have over its competitors?

A: Below are notable differentiators that make Carrier-1 Data Centers unique.

Carrier-1 owns the building
· This means complete control versus being under a third party lease; which leads to direct support and aggressive pricing for our tenants.

· We built it out ourselves, from scratch, with all new infrastructure for optimal efficiencies and redundancies. The facility was purpose-built, not a retrofit.

· Office space is available allowing tenants to establish a local presence for sales or support with direct access to the data center.

· We also maintain a 10,000 square foot Business Continuity Center which is premium office space for personnel to use in the event of a disaster.

Colocation space is available NOW with plenty of room to grow
· Phase I (10K sq. ft.) is complete; customers are live

· Phase II (10K sq. ft.) is under construction and will be online Q3 2016

· Phases III – VI are available now for expansion space, powered shell or as a custom build

· A minimum of 60,000 sq. ft. of planned raised floor space; we scale with you

Network diversity
· A full spectrum of network offerings ranges from carrier neutral options to a fully-managed network blend.

· We provide an inexpensive way to access big bandwidth without buying costly transport.

· Our tenants may access over 100 carriers via a new circuit or an existing network.

Service
· We concentrate on data center real estate with 100% uptime. We don’t provide other services which distract us from that focus or services which would compete with our customers.

· All employees of Carrier-1 work within the data center building in order to maintain a direct relationship with our customers and partners.

· Around-the-clock facility, security, technical and customer support is provided.

· We maintain a 100% customer retention rate.

Altogether, our facilities and commitment to tenant support makes it easy for us to provide unmatched colocation and internet infrastructure services to our end users.

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Q: What can we expect from you in next six months? What are your plans?

A: We are expanding our raised floor capacity. Demand for our Phase I data center has been high and we are filling up quickly, so we want to be ahead of the curve. Construction on Phase II, an adjacent 10,000 square foot data center, is underway. We are preselling the space now with a go-live timeframe of early Q3 this year.

We provide data center tours on a daily basis and encourage anyone who is interested in a primary colocation site, secondary (disaster recovery) colocation site and/or a business continuity solution for personnel in Dallas, to contact us to schedule a tour or to receive pricing.