Miami has hurricanes, Silicon Valley gets wildfires, and Seattle sits at the foot of a volcano. Where should your data center be? How about the heartland of America -- the Midwest -- where a growing number of server farms are springing up instead of corn or cattle farms.
John Rath, a service center manager in Cedar Falls, Iowa, says rural America is an ideal place to locate important technology infrastructure. He says power costs are lower, the existing workforce is highly-skilled, and plenty of renewable energy sources exist. Of course, save the occasional tornado, very few natural disasters obliterate large swaths of the midwest
Though you may not have given the idea much thought in the past, it's clear a concept is taking hold when the folks at Slashdot move their goods to Chicago and Amazon sets up shop in St. Louis.
Rath says, "In the past, Midwest states did not automatically come to mind when thinking of vast amounts of dark fiber. This image has radically changed in the past decade, and now there is an abundance of fiber and connectivity to Midwest cities. Carriers and other regional fiber providers have expanded their networks, and connectivity speeds are climbing. State programs and private ventures have created advanced infrastructures to support local businesses."
I think it would be great to see the Midwest gain traction as a reasonable option for housing data centers and server farms. I guess it also beats dropping your iron on a boat and sending it out to sea.