Contributed by Lonnie Emard, Executive Director of IT-oLogy

As IT-oLogy brought together business and academia, and began to look at the economic impact of information technology (IT) on the community, a message and question was brought to the table – exactly how big is the IT profession in the state of South Carolina?

When assessing the impact of the IT profession, the IT industry is the first thing looked at; more importantly, however, the profession includes not only the industry, but also the internal professionals who are the enablers of business solutions in all industry verticals – from manufacturing to insurance, retail to transportation. This clarity has been extremely important to the message of why building IT talent and applying that talent leads to economic growth.

With regard to the recent commentary about the limited scope of data centers in the state of South Carolina, once again IT-oLogy cares about the accuracy of the message being conveyed. A number of data centers, in addition to those mentioned, already exist in this state and have been highly successful because they have aligned themselves with a business need across an industry vertical like insurance, telecommunications or energy, to name a few.

Immedion has established itself as a leader in data center provisioning in South Carolina and has been a vital part of the IT-oLogy message about growing the economy with IT talent and delivering smarter, more efficient business solutions. BlueCross BlueShield of SC, located in northeast Columbia, is one of the largest data centers in the world and, while the focus is on insurance claims processing, it is the largest provider of that functionality in the country. Other companies like SCANA operate large data centers and do not outsource infrastructure because it is vital to their effective and efficient delivery of IT to both internal and external customers. While there are more examples like this, IT-oLogy wants to collaborate on supporting the right legislation that fuels growth and respectfully honors the tremendous assets that we already have in the state of South Carolina.

Please continue reading below for Immedion’s editorial, “South Carolina: A State with Multiple Data Centers.”

South Carolina, A state with Multiple Data Centers

Co-authored by Frank Mobley, Founder and CEO of Immedion, and Natalia Muska, Director of Marketing and Communications at Immedion

 In response to recent news that the SC House of Representatives has passed a bill to provide tax breaks to data center operators, we would like to point out that South Carolina is home to one of the fastest growing data center companies in the Southeast.

Immedion, a full-service enterprise-class data center services provider, has been operating in South Carolina since 2007. In five years, Immedion has built three 15,000 square foot facilities designed specifically to serve the growing infrastructure, cloud computing, and data protection needs of South Carolina’s business community.  In conjunction with the construction of the three data centers, Immedion has created over 50 high paying jobs for the state.  Immedion’s facilities in Greenville, Columbia and Charleston provide local companies the opportunity to meet computing infrastructure and management needs by outsourcing to a more efficient environment.  In addition to the environmental-related savings, outsourcing technology infrastructure allows companies to focus on core business needs rather than being concerned with the availability of computer systems.

Multi-tenant data centers have blossomed over the past 15 years as the need for 24×7 access to key business data has become critical to maintaining competitiveness.  At their core, multi-tenant data centers provide reliable computer room infrastructures complete with redundant air conditioners, power conditioning equipment and backup power generators.  The redundancies in the infrastructure ensure higher levels of data availability by protecting against the occasional loss of commercial power or air conditioning unit failure.  In addition to the underlying infrastructure, most multi-tenant data center operators provide IT services such as highly reliable connections to the Internet and technology management services that further enhance system reliability.  Like Immedion, many operators also offer “cloud” services which provide businesses access to a vast collection of computing resources such as processors, memory, and disk space on an as-needed basis without the typical upfront capital expenditures. 

Furthermore, Immedion and companies like Immedion contribute to growth and job creation in SC in two ways.  First, multi-tenant data centers create the jobs necessary to construct and operate the data centers, and deliver the services discussed above. To be specific, Immedion has created approximately 50 high paying technical, sales, customer support, marketing, and business administration jobs over the past 5 years. Second, Immedion works in collaboration with local organizations like IT-oLogy, Palmetto Partners for Technology, and local technical colleges to help support young talent in South Carolina. Immedion encourages the education of employees by providing tuition assistance at local universities and various other leadership and certification programs with the hope and intention of providing local talent with opportunities to thrive within our organization and within SC.

In addition to the internal positions, Immedion also supports SC job growth by providing cost-efficient alternatives for SC-based businesses to grow and operate their technology infrastructures.  A significant part of Immedion’s customer base are start-up businesses that without the availability of Immedion’s services and support would have been forced to look to Atlanta, Charlotte or elsewhere for available technology resources.  Established and well respected companies like Comporium Communications in Rock Hill and Home Telecom in Charleston have invested in Immedion because we help them better meet the infrastructure needs of their customer base and together we are keeping these dollars and jobs in SC.

While we admire the House of Representatives for taking an interest in IT and striving to learn more about the impact of emerging technologies like cloud computing, we want to point out that data centers are thriving in SC.  We are creating more jobs and providing more services to SC-based business than the companies being targeted by this bill. We’re not looking for cheap land and cheap energy.  We are looking to be part of the state economy, part of the next generation of thought leadership businesses within our state, our home. We are invested in South Carolina’s future, its businesses, and its people.