Latisys Pursues Data Center Expansion

Having bulked up its Chicago operations, Latisys has turned its attention to the West Coast — specifically Orange County, California. The company has plans for a 93,000 square foot facility in Irvine. The data center, slated to receive customers in Q2 2011, will be Latisys’ second in Orange County. Do these moves indicate continued growth for cloud-centric data centers?

No doubt, Latisys seems to be in growth mode. Once the Orange County data center is complete, the expansion will more than double the high-density raised floor space available to the company’s customers in Southern California, according to a Latisys spokesman.

Key industry segments in that region include gaming companies “that must handle a high number of simultaneous users playing online games with the requirement of low latency,” the spokesman said. Healthcare and life sciences are other markets of note.

In a related announcement, Latisys hired Robert Martin to manage the company’s Orange County data center operations. Martin had been managing Savvis’ Irvine facility.

Latisys in July 2010 expanded in the Chicago area, snapping up a former Exodus Communications data center. And in August 2010, the company announced a $110 million credit facility, which the company said will help it expand facilities in markets including Irvine.

All of those data points seem to be positive indicators for cloud computing-centric data centers. And we continue to see big data center service providers — such as Rackspace and The Planet — expanding their partner programs.

But we wonder: What will happen to mid-size MSPs? Will they try to bulk up by building their own data centers? Or will they follow the lead of small MSPs that typically partner up with industry giants?

Additional reporting by Joe Panettieri. Sign up for MSPmentor’s weekly Enewsletter, Webcasts and Resource Center. And follow us via RSS,Facebook, Identi.ca; and Twitter. Plus, check out more MSP voices at www.MSPtweet.com.