September 9, 2012
SouthernAlpha - HIGH GROWTH/TECH NEWS FOR THE SOUTHEAST
By Walker Duncan
Compass Datacenters, a Dallas-based company which recently raised a $45 million credit line from Ohio’s KeyBank, has purchased parcels in both North Carolina’s highly touted Research Triangle Park and in Franklin, Tennessee
As the announcement states: “Franklin is a town of 60,000 about 20 miles The property in Franklin is an undeveloped 14.6 acre parcel of land, where Compass has planning approval from local authorities to develop five 1.2 megawatt data centers.” Once we get past the grammar at play there, we can see that this should be a major development for Williamson County.
While plans in RTP will require that an existing building be demolished, the Franklin property is a green field.
Compass Datacenters CEO Chris Crosby went on to note,”Nashville and Research Triangle Park are perfect examples of emerging data center markets that are under-served by traditional wholesale providers,” Crosby added. “These markets are populated by fast-growing companies whose IT needs align perfectly with our standalone data center product, and we are having productive dialogues with potential customers that are excited about how we can provide a ‘no compromises’ solution to their data center challenges.” According to reports, these will be Compass’ first two data centers.
SouthernAlpha spoke briefly to Williamson County ECD head Matt Largen who expressed excitement about the project. While the job creation numbers are hard to gauge, and as data centers go, likely not the selling point for the project, the addition of Compass will likely be a boon to the local technology community .