In December, Involta acquired a data center in the village of Harrison that it will expand to serve growing demand in the region.
The Iowa-headquartered colocation, hybrid IT and managed services firm plans to expand the existing 24.5-acre site to create a campus with up to 20 megawatts of capacity, serving clients in various industries from health care to manufacturing to finance.
The data center, previously owned by Kimberly-Clark, is the company’s first double-digit data center campus investment.
I recently had the opportunity to speak with Involta’s new CEO, Brett Lindsey, about why the company chose Northeast Wisconsin for its 13th U.S. data center location, which will have an April 1 launch day. He said the region offered the ideal mix of space, power and existing industry, which is important as artificial intelligence will require more capacity within data centers.
“It was a really unique opportunity for us to find a facility that made sense, with a great universe of potential enterprise customers around us, but also be able to have something that has enough scale for us to continue to grow and support AI opportunities as they present themselves,” Lindsey says.
About a year and a half ago, Involta was acquired by global investment firm Carlyle and rolled out a plan for significant data center growth. Lindsey says that over the next 24 months, Involta will be identifying six to eight new markets for further expansion.
About 10 New North companies have already expressed interest in Involta’s services, but Lindsey says interest won’t be limited to the surrounding region — across the U.S. data center landscape, the most difficult thing to procure is power.
“You used to think that data centers would be predominantly filled with people from within that geographic area. What we are finding now, because it’s so difficult to find data center space with the available power, is we will draw companies from across the U.S.,” Lindsey says. “We are routinely getting calls from people looking for one, two or five megawatts of power, which can [require] a 12, 24 or even 36-month lead time in other areas across the U.S. where that power is just in such incredible demand.”
