Centers of excellence
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Centers of excellence DataBank has enjoyed a hugely successful 18 months, characterized by acquisitions and organic development and super-charged by its takeover from Digital Bridge
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he last couple of years in the data center industry have been characterized by a high level of mergers and acquisition (M&A) activity, with a record 2016 set to be comfortably surpassed in 2017, with the value of deals expected to run into multi-billion-dollar territory. One of the companies that has been particularly busy is DataBank, which was itself the subject of a takeover from Digital Bridge in June 2016. Headquartered in the historic former Federal Reserve Bank Building in downtown Dallas, TX the company is a leading provider of enterprise-class data center, cloud, and interconnection services, offering customers 100% uptime availability of data, applications, and infrastructure. DataBank’s managed data center services are anchored in world-class facilities, and after a recent flurry of activity the company currently boasts 13 data centers located across Dallas, Minneapolis, Kansas City, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Salt Lake City, Baltimore and Atlanta, operating within or managing major
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Databank data center
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• Lower pPUE • Free cooling to increase energy efficiency • Data Centre air fully separated • Energy efficiency: Evaporative Cooling ESEERs over 45 • 3 modes of operation • Munters heat exchanger technology • Any fresh water type • Configurable design • Efficiency internal fan wall
ADV Oasis™ Indirect Evaporative Coolers Munters Oasis™ Indirect Evaporative Coolers (IEC) save you money, provide optimal operation and serve as an energy efficient solution for cooling your data center. We are also proud to offer 1st class dedicated global sales and service teams plus fully operational test facilities for Factory Acceptance Testing and simulation. The facilities follow ASHRAE Standard 143-2015 guideline method for indirect evaporative cooling testing. More information about our testing facilities can be found on our website. www.munters.com/dctestfacility Call to find out how much the Oasis™ IEC can meet your data centre cooling and efficiency needs.
Munters 225 S. Magnolia Ave Buena Vista VA 24416 USA / Tel: +1 540 291 1111 E-mail: datacenters@munters.com Web: munters.com/datacentres
Munters a ''Cool Partner'' DataBank is a leading provider of customized colocation solutions and services that are designed to help organizations manage risk and improve business performance. With 10 data centers located in various parts of the country, the DataBanks team of experienced professionals are familiar with various challenges faced while creating energy efficient design strategies. In a due diligence process consisting of comprehensive technical analysis and discussions with existing clients, DataBank has chosen to partner with Munters and utilize the proven Oasis TM IEC data center cooling technology. Focusing on the latest DataBank location in Minneapolis, Munters Oasis TM Indirect evaporative cooling (IEC) units with the patented EPX polymer heat exchanger have been installed to effectively reject heat from the data center. The Oasis system are 100% Indirect Air Side Economizers and do not introduce outside air. With no leaks, and a re circulating system, the data center is cooled without the introduction of outdoor air pollutants that might adversely impact the servers.
In Minnesota, there is only 10% of a year when the outside temperatures are too high and moist for the evaporative cooling alone. During this time a small mechanical cooling system (trim DX) supplements the evaporative process, so that the air supplied to the data center is maintained at the right temperature. This condition where refrigeration is required to supplement the IEC only occurs during conditions with simultaneous high heat and humidity.
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Munters OasisTM IEC unit installation on the roof of Minnesota DatBank facility
The weather in Minneapolis goes into extremes regardless of the relative humidity (RH), with high RH in the summer and extremely low RH in the winter. The Munters Oasis IEC operates in one of three modes, depending on the ambient air temperature, dry, wet and wet +trimming DX. On cold and cool days, the Oasis heat exchanger operates dry and simply acts an air-to air heat exchanger. Outside air (commonly referred to as scavenger air) indirectly cools the data center air through normal heat exchange, without the use of any water. The EPX polymer tubes have been tested ยบand are proven effective despite the extreme cold in the northern climate of Minnesota where wind chill can drop to -35ยบF. Once the ambient temperature rises to a certain point, the Oasis heat exchanger will not be able to provide enough cooling while operating in dry mode. When this happens, water is pumped from internal sumps to the air handlers spray nozzles that wet the outside surface of the polymer heat exchanger tubes, cooling them with a thin layer of water. The scavenger air evaporates water on the exterior of the tubes, which causes heat to be extracted from the re circulating data center air flowing, internal to the tubes. In this evaporation mode, the Oasis heat exchanger will be able to cool the re circulated air even when outside temperatures are quite high.
Munters OasisTM IEC cooling unit installation on Minnesota DataBank facility
The highly effective Munters Oasis cooling system saves in annual operating costs resulting from lower power and water consumption compared to conventional water cooled chiller systems. The choice of DataBank to partner with Munters and integrate the Oasis IEC cooling technology has resulted in a pPue = 1.06 and a PUE = 1.12. The low PUE, proven reliability of the Munters Oasis Units has contributed to the overall capital savings experienced by DataBank, allowing them to operate with a competitive edge.
www.munters.com/datacenters
We build confidence. Databank Richardson
Databank Downtown Dallas
Databank Richardson
6688 N. Central Expressway Suite #100 Dallas, TX 75206 214 363 7870 k2gc.com
www.k2gc.com
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network interconnect facilities within each of the regions. This footprint of top-tier facilities is dedicated to providing uninterrupted access to customer data, applications and IT equipment. DataBank’s services provide business solutions for corporate enterprises, including hybrid cloud services, customize IT deployments, and industry compliant regulations to meet the outsourcing needs for IT management, maintenance and operations. The company serves a wide range of customer verticals including media and content distribution, cloud infrastructure providers and telecom networks. The business has consistently made headlines in recent years – both before and since the Digital Bridge takeover – as a result of a number of eye-catching deals to buy or build facilities in some of the United States’ fastest emerging data center hotspots. In the last 12 months, DataBank has announced:
Raul Martynek, CEO
Raul Martynek joined DataBank in June of 2016 as the Chief Executive Officer. In this role, he provides overall strategic direction of the company and its operations. Raul is a 20+ year veteran in the telecom and Internet Infrastructure sector. He most recently served as a Senior Advisor for Digital Bridge Holdings LLC. Prior to Digital Bridge, he served as Chief Executive Officer for New Jersey-based data center and managed services operator Net Access, LLC. Net Access was acquired in November 2015 by Denver-based data center operator Cologix. Prior to Net Access, he was the CEO of Voxel dot Net, Inc., a global managed hosting and cloud company, which was acquired by Internap Network Services Corp. in early 2012. Mr. Martynek also served as the Chief Restructuring Officer of Smart Telecom, a Dublin, Ireland-based fibre carrier which was acquired by Digiweb in 2009. databank.com
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DataBank’s New DFW-3 Data Center
“With DigitalBridge we have a very active M&A program. We’re constantly looking at new opportunities.” – Raul Martynek, CEO 10
the development of a purpose-built 94,000 sqft data in partnership with Georgia Tech; the construction of a third data center in Dallas; the acquisition of C7 Data Centers, the primary interconnection hub and largest data center service provider in Salt Lake City; the construction of a third 15,000 sqft data hall at its Minneapolis-area data center; and the acquisition of carrier-rich downtown data centers in Cleveland and Pittsburgh from 365 Data Centers. Its most recent activity, announced on September 21, saw DataBank acquire Edge Hosting. DataBank said the acquisition will provide both market expansion and additional expertise in the delivery of cloud solutions and managed services, especially for clientele requiring comprehensive operational controls for a number of commercial and government compliance standards. Raul Martynek is key to the story, having acted as a Senior Advisor to Digital Bridge before taking over as CEO at DataBank when the acquisition completed. Speaking exclusively,
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he reveals: “The majority of the work I did for Digital Bridge was around the DataBank acquisition, so it was obviously something that I felt very strongly about and thought would be very positive for the business. “Now that I’ve transitioned to CEO of the company, I feel the best component of the Digital Bridge relationship is that it is a group with very, very well-established access to long-term capital. To be successful in the data center space you really have to have a long-term plan and access to funds. The investments
we are making in building new data centers are not something that you get an immediate return on. “We are in the process of building two new data centers, one a 145,000 sqft with over nine-megawatts available in Dallas, which is nearing completion, and we’ve also started on a 94,000 eight-megawatt facility in Atlanta. Those types of investments would not be possible with any kind of traditional private equity type of vehicle, where people are looking to get in and out of investments in a five to 10-year period.
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“That’s really been, to me, the most exciting part. Having run private-equity backed businesses in the past, and now contrasting that with our situation here at DataBank with Digital Bridge. We can have a long-term viewpoint on the marketplace. It allows us to make different types of investments, which we believe will return very favourably to shareholders in the future.” Key to the appeal of the purchase for Digital Bridge was DataBank’s continuing ambition to grow into underserved markets, where there is huge potential for expansion, says Kevin Ooley, President and CFO of DataBank, who has been with the business since 2011. “From 2011 to 2016, the plan was to capitalize on the Dallas presence, grow into underserved markets, and then add a layer of services on top that we knew our clients wanted. And we did that. We invested in Minneapolis and in Kansas City and built a second facility in Dallas,” he comments.
Kevin Ooley, President & CFO
Kevin Ooley took on the role of President in May of 2017 and has served as the Chief Financial Officer of DataBank since 2011. He has over 20 years of extensive experience in delivering shareholder value through the creation and implementation of growth and operational strategies. Prior to joining DataBank, Ooley served as the CFO for the Thompson Media Group and as a Principal at Lovett Miller & Co., a growth capital private equity firm based in Florida. He was also a Director of Strategy for iXL Enterprises and a Manager in Accenture’s Strategic Services practice. Ooley holds a Bachelor of Industrial Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology and a Master of Business Administration from Duke University.
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YOUR MISSION IS CRITICAL. THAT’S ALL WE THINK ABOUT. When your daily challenge is managing data systems, your focus is on maximizing resources and having ready and secure access to your critical data. Vertiv, formerly Emerson Network Power, makes your success possible by delivering infrastructure and management solutions including the ASCO®, Chloride®, Liebert®, NetSure™ and Trellis™ brands customers – by making your critical mission our own.
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Visit VertivCo.com/datacenter to learn more. Vertiv and Vertiv logo are trademark or registered trademarks of Vertiv Co.
DATABANK’S DATA CENTERS PITTSBURGH
DALLAS
DataBank currently operates three Dallas area data centers. It’s Legacy Park facility is underconstruction in Plano, another in the telecom-rich northern suburb of Richardson, and its downtown data center facility and headquarters is the former Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, now a connectivity-rich carrier-hotel.
DataBank currently operates one data center facility in Downtown Pittsburgh. This site is within the telecom-rich business park, Nova Place. The site came into the DataBank portfolio through acquisition in January 2017.
KANSAS CITY
DataBank currently operates one data center facility in the heart of Downtown Cleveland. The telecom-rich location, boasting a number of toptier providers, came into the DataBank portfolio via acquisition in January 2017.
Both Kansas City data centers came into DataBank’s portfolio through the acquisition of Arsalon Technologies in April 2014. The data center sites are built out to top-tier standards and operate as the managed services hub for the company. The facilities host a number of prominent local and state-wide businesses as clients.
MINNEAPOLIS
ATLANTA
CLEVELAND
DataBank has two Minneapolis-Area data centers. Our West Twin Cities data center is located off of France Avenue in Edina, MN and its newest data center is located in Eagan, MN. The Tier-III certified purpose-built facility opened in the Spring 2015 and features unmatched power availability, connectivity and security.
SALT LAKE CITY
DataBank currently operates three data center facilities in Salt Lake City area. All three of these top-tier data center sites came into the DataBank’s portfolio via acquisition in early 2017. One is located in downtown SLC and the other two are just to the South at our campus in Bluffdale, UT.
Salt Lake City
Kansas City Dallas
DataBank currently operates one data center in the Atlanta area. DataBank’s Atlanta data center is currently under-construction in midtown Atlanta, GA, nearby anchor-tenant Georgia Tech’s campus.
BALTIMORE
DataBank currently operates one data center in the Baltimore area. DataBank’s downtown Baltimore data center came into the DataBank’s portfolio via the acquisition of the compliant-cloud and managed service specialized Edge Hosting, late in 2017.
Cleveland Minneapolis Atlanta
Pittsburgh Baltimore
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“When Digital Bridge came on like Pittsburgh and Cleveland and board, they liked that strategy, Salt Lake City and Minneapolis and they agreed with it. It was a natural Kansas City. If you look at DataBank’s transition that the larger ownership evolution that’s exactly what we’ve group and dollars behind it allowed done. We started in a tier-one market, us to continue with that plan, but which is Dallas, and it’s still a very on a much-accelerated schedule, important market for us, but all our and really take it beyond the Central expansions since then have been time zone. So, we still focus into these other markets where on underserved markets we see demand evolving and, using a football as the internet of analogy, American everything becomes football, underserved more important.” NFL cities: Chicago, The recent New York, Northern announcement Virginia, Silicon that DataBank has Number of Employees Valley are very well partnered Georgia at DataBank Ltd served, with a great Tech to develop a deal of competition. So, new 94,000 sqft data we’re going after that Salt center in downtown Atlanta, Lake City, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, housing high-performance computing Atlanta, that secondary market nodes and unique datasets for that has served us very well.” university research, has certainly Martynek is on the same page: piqued the interest of the data center “What we see is that as the internet world. Located in Midtown Atlanta, continues to evolve, that there needs DataBank’s ATL1 data center will to be infrastructure in secondary serve as a HPCC (High-Performance markets; this trend that’s called the Computing Center) and will house the ‘edge’ – our view is the edge is alive Southern Crossroads providing high and well today. It exists in places speed, high bandwidth connectivity
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to research and education sites throughout the southeast and across the nation. Construction of DataBank’s ATL1 data center is scheduled for Q4 of this year, with construction slated for Q4 2018 completion. Martynek says that the opportunity to work with academia and parachute the DataBank into a new business space was too good to turn up. “This is a very high-profile project, a very major investment, and all indications are that it’s going to be very successful because it’s starting with an incredible foundation, which is Georgia Tech.” “We saw an opportunity to insert ourselves into an ecosystem that we hadn’t been in before. We’re very well established in the corporate enterprise ecosystem, we’re very well established in the carrier network ecosystem, and we’re very well established in what we call SMACC, which is social, media, analytics, content and cloud, so the internet ecosystem. “This project represents a fourth ecosystem, that we really didn’t have any exposure to. We felt that given the profile of Georgia Tech,
OVER 500,000SQ FT AND COUNTING DataBank’s recent acquisition of Stream Data Centers’ latest development in Legacy Business Park, Dallas, Texas, has expanded the company’s portfolio to more than 500,000 sqft. The data center dubbed DFW3, will be a multi-tenant, Tier-3 data center largely aimed at IT outsourcing. Located on an owned 16-acre site, the initial building will comprise 145,000 sqft with 60,000 sqft of white-space and the ability to expand to 265,000 sqft and 120,000 sqft of whitespace. “The larger footprint we have, the more we can address different customer requirements; larger customers want to deploy in multiple markets and then different types of configurations, enterprise and interconnection,” says Martynek. “That footprint facilitates our ability to be a good partner with our partners. It’s one of the benefits that we think will accrue to us as we expand.” Ooley concurs, commenting: “The larger the footprint, the more scale you have, the more attractive you are to Fortune 500 clients and large technology companies. It means that we can serve customers that need locations on the east or west coast, as well as a central location as well. “Aside from the potential for clients, the spread of locations has enabled us to attract more talent, and deepen the strength of our employees. In addition, it helps drive down our cost to capital. So just like customers find us more attractive, so do banks and equity partners.”
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“We’re reticent to go into a market without an established presence, in other words greenfield. That’s a really big difference between what’s happening now and what happened in the bubble era.” – Raul Martynek, CEO
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it would be just a tremendous way to get into that ecosystem. We’re hugely excited about it and the conversations we’ve had with Georgia Tech have been extremely positive.” The project is also one close to Ooley’s heart, not just because of the potential it represents for DataBank, but also due to the time he spent as an undergraduate student at the University. “I’ve experienced the emphasis and resources that they put into research. It’s one of the highest rated engineering institutes in the US, and the commitment to this area and the broader Atlanta community is unparalleled. I’m really pleased to be a part of that, and we will benefit because a lot of our customers will see us providing this for them and we’ll gain credibility to be able to take this and offer it in other markets,” he comments. Away from academia, DataBank has entered Cleveland and Pittsburgh after its acquisition of network-neutral data center facilities from 365 Data Centers. “Cleveland and Pittsburgh offer very highly connected facilities, so it was a positive way for us to enter
into the marketplace,” says Ooley. “This opportunity aligned with one of our two acquisitions strategies, which is to go into a market and pick up an asset and then build our data bank design, data centers around that.” Elaborating on strategy employed by DataBank, Martynek reveals: “We look at markets analytically – not every market is going to be a good one. Cleveland, Pittsburgh and our Atlanta announcement, all three of those markets were on our radar as good markets that had good characteristics from a long-term absorption of incremental data center space. “We’re reticent to go into a market without an established presence, in other words greenfield. That’s a really big difference between what’s happening now and what happened in the bubble era. “I’ve been in the sector since 1994, so I’ve seen the evolution. In the bubble era, companies planted flags, they would set up operations in a location without a single customer. That doesn’t happen today in data center land. People realize it’s very difficult to convince users,
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sophisticated enterprise users, in a given market, to give them business just by coming up and saying ‘Hi, I’m the new guy on the block. I’m going to do a good job for you.’ “You have no track record, and this is a business of trust. The enterprise person is going to be loathed to trust you over someone who’s been in the market for three years, five years, ten years, and has that track record. That’s why we look to seek out acquisitions as our market entry method, after we’ve underwritten the viability and attractiveness
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of a given market. That’s exactly what we did with 365’s assets.” Amongst the myriad of challenges of operating a clutch of data centers across the United States is one of sustainability. Data centers are by their nature power hungry beasts that demand round-the-clock attention. To that end, DataBank measures the energy output of its centers on a PUE (percentage utilisation effectiveness) basis. “It’s a pretty simple concept, which is how much power is the entire data center using? That’s what’s on
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Legacy Park Data Center (DFW 3) - Plano, TX
the numerator. The denominator is how much power are our customers consuming?” says Martynek. “The closer you can get that number to one, the more efficient you are, because I can’t change the power usage of my customer’s equipment, that’s his decision, but I can ensure that my facility operates as efficiently as possible. We’ve been doing a lot there to ensure that we get to a very low number. Our facilities in Utah are at like 1.2, 1.3, which is very, very strong. We’re only using 200 to 300 KW per megawatt to run the entire facility.
That’s how we measure sustainability. “The market’s starting to evolve where we’re able to purchase power from more sustainable long-term renewable type of sources. I think you see, across the industry, big commitments, not only from the large customers, like the Apples and the Googles and the Amazons of the world, but even our larger data center competitors are demanding that type of option. I think those are going to trickle down to us, because we’re still a small consumer compared to them. I think we’re
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BIG IN TEXAS While DataBank has made its intentions to grow into secondary or ‘edge’ markets clear, its homes state of Texas – very much a primary market – remains hugely important to the business. It recently announced the acquisition of Stream Data Centers’ latest development in Legacy Business Park – known as DFW-3. The state-of-theart, multi-tenant, Tier-3 data center in Plano, will offer Dallas area businesses a new highquality option for outsourced data center capacity in the rapidly growing Legacy business corridor. Located on an owned 16-acre site, the initial building will comprise 145,000 sqft with 60,000 sqft of white-space and the ability to expand to 265,000 sqft and 120,000 sqft of whitespace. “The Plano submarket is one of the hottest office parks in the US
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right now. A lot of companies are moving either their headquarters or material or a substantial portion of their business to that area,” says Ooley. “And for example, Toyota, Liberty Insurance, these are companies that have moved a lot of their operations to that submarket. We wanted to be right in the heart of it. “Texas has sold itself number one as being a very businessfriendly state. Two, I think from an affordability standpoint, relative to the coast, California, New York, the cost of doing business here is still very affordable. There’s a huge talent pool here. From really, across the board. This is a big telecommunications and hightech hub, so it’s just a good labour pool from which to tap. it’s just a really good place to do business.”
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going to benefit from their activity.” It is also likely that DataBank will continue to benefit from the consolidation that is evidently taking place in the data center industry, with Martynek of the opinion that the sector is very fragmented compared to industries such as wireless, telco or cable. “When you look at this space it’s ten years behind where those other sectors are,” he says. So, plenty of potential for further acquistional activity. In addition, Marytnek believes the service offering Databank is bringing to market sets it apart from some of the competition. “We’ve adopted what is called the hybrid approach. What that means is we offer not just co-location solutions, but we offer managed service and network solutions, on a single platform in the same building. That’s not something that a lot of people do. “It’s much harder to do that,
because obviously, your expertise has to expand into a wider set of products and services. Ultimately, we see that as the winning formula in that enterprise market. We see our enterprise customers that are one megawatt and below asking us to do more for them around managed services, around network. That is a huge source of differentiation for us.” He concludes: “Our plan over the next 12 - 18 months is to continue to dig deeper in our existing marketing. That’s our function of what I described earlier in terms of bringing on new inventory, new capability. “With DigitalBridge we have a very active M&A program. We’re constantly looking at new opportunities. I do envision us continuing to expand geographically through incremental acquisitions into attractive secondary markets that fit our strategy.”
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400 S. Akard Street Dallas, United States TX 75202 Tel. 1.800.840.7533 www.databank.com