I got the heads up on a new data center in Alexandira from the Minnesota High Tech Assocaition newsletter.The MHTA reports…

Vaultas, a premier provider of innovative and collaborative, vendor-neutral data center and BCDR (Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery) facilities in the Upper Midwest, today announced the completion and general availability of the company’s new public collocation data center facility in Alexandria, Minnesota. The new facility is the first of its kind in Northern Minnesota, and represents the newest public data center operation in the state.

It’s great news and exactly the kind of business that I think most communities would like to see come to their area, just as on a grander scale, it would be nice to see more of these projects come to Minnesota. (It may not be as big as Amazon’s North Dakota expansion – but it opens the road to more expansion in the area.) I wrote to Vaultas President John Unger to ask how they selected Alexandria. Here is his answer.

The Alexandria location is strategically located and well suited to meet many primary and backup data center applications for the businesses of greater Minnesota. Alexandria is located 100+ miles from most of the major cities in Minnesota and can meet most organizational and regulatory requirements for backup data storage. We are also over 100miles from Fargo ND and with their flooding issues that do not seem to go away are also in serious need of a better location for data storage etc. Best practices suggest your back up copy should be at least 50 miles away from the original and most public companies require 100 miles. From a regulatory standpoint the requirements are the same or similar 50 to 100 miles depending on nature of the data. So the Alexandria location meets the needs of the largest number of businesses in Minnesota providing Vaultas with a larger market.

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The second reason we chose Alexandria is the ability to serve a larger geographical area of rural Minnesota from a network and bandwidth perspective. The Alexandria area has a larger concentration of fiber optic networks and the data center has a greater need for this bandwidth. If the data center is developed in a strategic location where one can have access to more than one, two or even three or more network and bandwidth providers they have access to a much larger geographical reach, ability to serve many more locations, greater chance to obtain cost effective network solutions from multiple providers creating resiliency, reliability, and meeting regulatory requirements for many businesses, storing critical data. Vaultas has chosen a few locations in Minnesota and in North Dakota that we are looking to develop additional data centers on. The trend is to bring your data to the “Cloud” or the networks the ability to have the environment and the access to bandwidth providers only make that easier and more cost effective for all. This new Vaultas data center and BCDR complex drives new and faster economic development in these areas and allows rural Minnesota to be a “real” part of the World Wide Web. This vendor/carrier neutral data center will drive and foster collaboration for both customer and vendor providing better and more cost effective solutions for every aspect of their IT and Web presence. This new Vaultas data center will also foster the growth of IPTV or network based television as they are in need of 10Gig network speeds and the Vaultas data center is only one of a few locations offering multiple 10Gigabit networks in rural Minnesota.

This network is currently supporting 10G service from Minneapolis 511 11th Ave carrier hotel to Alexandria, MN with stops in Monticello, St Cloud, Albany, Upsala, Melrose, Sauk Centre, with planned expansion to the Fargo ND market with stops in Fergus Falls, Detroit Lakes, Morehead and Fargo ND.

If you happen to be in or around Alexandria on May 24, you could attend their grand opening.