Thursday evening marked a landmark day for the future of the Birmingham area’s economy, as Governor Kay Ivey and other state and local government officials emphasized at the ribbon-cutting ceremony for DC BLOX‘s new Tier 3 data center facility.
Headquartered in Atlanta, DC BLOX is a revolutionary multi-tenant data center provider delivering high-tech solutions in an increasingly digital age.
The company brings data centers closer to job creators in growing cities, provides cloud services to support hybrid information technology (IT) environments and connects everything with high-performance networks to ensure business continuity.
The new Birmingham facility is DC BLOX’s second location in the state and will serve as the company’s flagship facility. This multi-phase development has the potential for a $785 million investment over the next decade.
“We live in a digital age, and the world is not standing still. DC BLOX’s new data center is certainly a welcome addition to the Birmingham community,” Governor Kay Ivey said in a statement.
“It will connect the city with high-performance networks to ensure business continuity, and ultimately, it will drive the digital economy,” she continued. “In addition to elevating Birmingham’s technological capabilities, the new data center will bring several high-paying jobs for Alabamians. DC BLOX’s efforts are a much-appreciated investment into Alabama’s future success, and their increased presence in this great state will help propel us forward.”
We’re celebrating our state’s cont’d growth in the digital age w/ the grand opening of @DCBLOXinc’s data center in the Magic City! This $785 M investment marks the 2nd AL location for this great company. We look fwd to the impact it’ll have on our expanding IT industry! @MadeinAL pic.twitter.com/ky1cHzHsWx
— Governor Kay Ivey (@GovernorKayIvey) July 11, 2019
The first phase of the new facility, now customer ready, delivers up to 5MW of power, 18,000 square feet of white space and 13,000 square feet of office space, featuring conference rooms, demo space, hoteling cubes and workstations.
“We are thrilled to be joining the Birmingham community,” Jeff Uphues, CEO of DC BLOX, commented. “The State of Alabama and the City of Birmingham care deeply about the prosperity of their citizens and are working to bring in companies like ours to invest in their communities and bring jobs to the region. They understand that a data center is core infrastructure that attracts other technology-dependent companies, and we couldn’t be more excited to be a part of it.”
The Birmingham location is capable of expanding to over 200,000 square feet with over 60MW of critical IT load to serve as a technology and innovation hub for the surrounding area.
“This DC BLOX data center is a major addition to the City of Birmingham and the Titusville neighborhood,” Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin said.
“This data center will help strengthen Birmingham’s future economy in a more digital world, as well as utilize a long-vacant property to revitalize the surrounding area in one of our neighborhoods,” he concluded. “We look forward to a long relationship with DC BLOX and helping them connect companies to the world.”
DC BLOX has an existing facility in Huntsville, with an expansion plan that will soon blanket the southeast.
As data centers move more toward the edge of the network to accommodate a growing number of applications demanding local processing and storage, low-latency, high-capacity connectivity is a key component of this evolving digital architecture.
DC BLOX’s Birmingham data center offers access to the company’s full breadth of solutions, including: cloud storage; colocation; and rich connectivity to support private sector, government and education customers, as well as managed service providers, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) companies and content providers that do business across the southeast.
The new facility is also part of DC BLOX’s private, high-speed network fabric, which provides 100Gb+ bandwidth, low-latency connections to internet exchanges, access to numerous carriers across data centers and secure cloud connectivity.
“With construction designed to withstand 150+ mph winds, N+1 power and cooling systems, a fully- protected private network and enhanced security developed to accommodate Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) standards, the Birmingham facility is designed for security and reliability,” Mark Masi, DC BLOX COO, advised. “Our data hall is designed to accommodate cabinets of varying densities and can be adapted for custom solutions as well.”
DC BLOX worked closely with several private and public sector partners to bring the transformational project to Birmingham, including: the Alabama Department of Commerce; Alabama Power Company; Birmingham Business Alliance; Jefferson County Commission; City of Birmingham and its Department of Innovation and Economic Opportunity; Jefferson County Economic and Industrial Development Authority; Birmingham Industrial Development Board; Spire; Economic Development Partnership of Alabama; and the Titusville Neighborhood Association.
“We want to thank all involved for their role in bringing this to fruition,” Jefferson County Commission President Jimmie Stephens said. “The State, City, County and business leaders all worked together to make this possible. We appreciate DC BLOX having the confidence in our region and committing to our collective future.”
This comes as Birmingham looks to continue its ascent as a major national technology hub.
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Sean Ross is a staff writer for Yellowhammer News. You can follow him on Twitter @sean_yhn
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