InkSoft’s primary data center is located in Albuquerque, New Mexico. According to the Albuquerque Journal, Albuquerque is the sixth-best American city in which to locate secure data centers.
A national site-selection firm reports that Albuquerque is the sixth-best American city in which to locate secure data centers.
The Boyd Co. Inc., based in Princeton, N.J., said that Albuquerque made its top 10 list because of its “robust bandwidth; telecommunications and power infrastructures; favorable operating cost structures; and its (established) high tech research base.”
Albuquerque is also home to a National Security Agency-accredited National Center of Academic Excellence in Information Assurance Education at the University of New Mexico. “UNM faculty members have developed a nationally recognized data-security education program that includes unique partnerships” with the FBI and the Department of Energy, according to Boyd’s report.
Data centers are designed to protect information and information systems, according to the NSA, by “ensuring their availability, integrity, authentication, confidentiality and non-repudiation,” which means the center can assure that a party to a transaction, using an ATM, for example, will have no basis for backing out of the transaction over a question of its validity.
John Boyd Jr., a principal of The Boyd Co., told the Journal in an interview that the need for data centers is booming. The Dodd-Frank financial regulation law imposes many new data requirements on banks and other financial companies. New federal regulations will increase the amount of secure data health-care providers generate. NSA and other federal agencies are trying to lower costs and improve security by moving data centers away from the coasts into places like Sioux Falls, S.D., and Salt Lake City.
Navajo-owned defense contractor Nova Corp. decided last year to build a 50,000-square-foot data center and office building at Mesa del Sol in Albuquerque. Boyd said a number of other defense-related data center operators are “definitely” considering Albuquerque.
The Boyd Co. report estimates it would cost $11.2 million a year to operate a secure data center in Albuquerque, including the amortized costs of establishing a new center. The estimated annual cost ranges from a high of $23.7 million in New York City to a low of $10.4 million in Sioux Falls.
In addition to its infrastructure, low costs and information-technology resources, Boyd said Albuquerque is relatively immune from natural disasters. Companies are leaving places like Florida to escape interruptions to electrical supplies caused by hurricanes, he said.
Albuquerque offers good health care, inexpensive land and low-cost and reliable electric power, Boyd said.
According to Boyd, data centers pay an average salary of $80,000 a year. Data center operations are difficult to relocate once they are established, and they can be a company’s initial entry into a market, to be followed by back office operations, manufacturing or headquarters staff.
Working against Albuquerque is higher business taxation than some competitors, such as South Dakota, and the absence of a right-to-work law, Boyd said.
via ABQJournal Online » ABQ ranks 6th for secure data center sites.
