Austin is recognized across the globe for our great quality of life and dynamic high-tech economy. Key players in the data center industry have operations in Austin, whether headquarters, R&D, manufacturing, or mission critical enterprise data centers of their own: AMD, IBM, Citicorp, Cisco, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Home Depot, Intel, Oracle, and Sun are some of the names on this roster.

Austin is a central time zone city with a low risk for natural disasters. Real estate is well-priced and available. The telephony infrastructure is in place and the area's energy providers work hand in hand with industry looking for increased efficiency and greener solutions. A long history in data centers and related technology and services means that the area is replete with necessary support services and a qualified technical workforce.

Austin delivers all the necessary elements to keep your data center up and running.

“Site location decisions are made based largely upon data gathered in an effort to measure the likelihood of a company’s success in any given metro area. Businesses choose places like Austin because they are the 'total package'.”
—Expansion Management, August 2006

“Austin has the location and room to grow, proximity to a major university and access to one of the finest talent pools in the United States . . . as well as the business climate created by the city and county.”
—Bob DeRodes, Executive VP & CIO, The Home Depot

Austin has welcomed several data center projects in recent years:

• Citigroup is constructing an approximately 300,000 square foot data center in Georgetown (just north of Austin) projected to be operational in 2008.
• Hewlett-Packard chose Austin for two data centers totaling 400,000 square feet when consolidating its national data centers in 2006.
• IBM was contracted by the State of Texas to consolidate several data centers across the state into one location in Austin.
• The Home Depot Technology Center located a data center and customer support operations for their website in 2004.
• Oracle set up an innovative, award winning data center in Austin in 2003. The 130,000 SF data center hosts the world’s largest Network Appliance and Dell/Linux installations under one roof. In its IT overhaul, Oracle merged 40 data centers into this site. One quarter of the site’s energy supply comes from green sources, primarily a wind farm in Texas, earning it designation as an EPA Green Power Partner and Austin Energy’s GreenChoice member.
• NetNation, a Canadian-based web hosting and co-location services company recently located a data center in Austin. The company targets small to mid-sized companies.
• Austin is one of three cities in the U.S. to have a Corporate Franchise Data Center, operated and housed with the Department of Veterans Affairs. Formerly called the Austin Automation Center, this franchise fund provides cost-efficient IT enterprise solutions to support the information technology needs of customers within the Federal sector.
• The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), is headquartered in the Austin area and has a data center, as well as their back-up command center for overseeing the electric grid for the State of Texas in Austin.
• Mi8 set up a Network Operations Center to manage a Microsoft Exchange server from Austin.
• Dell has two global data centers in Austin supporting more than 78,000 employees worldwide, with an additional three smaller data centers dedicated to supporting manufacturing facilities in Austin. The two Austin global data centers comprise one of the largest storage-area networks (SANs) in the U.S.
• The University of Texas System maintains Austin data centers for mission critical data as well as for its super computing centers and research needs.

Long home to many innovators in the industry, Austin is seeing new success sprout from smaller companies offering new ideas to the industry.

• ColdWatt: produces a line of power conversion products designed to reduce power bills in data centers. ColdWatt, a spin off from Rockwell Scientific, says its power supplies are more efficient than competing products, allowing data center operators to cut costs by using less power and spending less on cooling.
• NetEffect makes a line of high-speed network communications chips that can deliver improved performance to groups of servers working inside data centers.
• Uplogix developed the first integrated remote management solution that goes beyond basic connectivity and monitoring of data centers and distributed infrastructure, providing virtual administration and constant, secure connectivity.

Young. Creative. Productive.
Austin is not only a dynamic business destination, our workforce is a dynamic business asset. It’s all about the people, and the labor pool in Austin is by far one of the most innovative, young and educated in the country.

Our ability to attract and retain talent led to our population increasing to over 1.5 million in 2006. The region’s population grew 21% between 2000 and 2006, a rate nearly twice that of the state (12.7%) and more than three times that of the nation (6.4%).

We are also younger than the country, with nearly half the population (46%) in the working years between 18 and 44. Our median age (32.5 years) is four years younger than the national median (36.4 years). The population is also more educated than the national average with nearly 39% having at least a bachelor's degree (compared with the national average of 27%).

Within a 100-mile radius of Austin, you will find 38 colleges and universities anchored by the University of Texas at Austin, one of the nation’s largest universities and among the tech industry’s most well regarded workforce pipelines.

The Austin region features several training providers including Austin Community College, Skillpoint Alliance and WorkSource who develop customized training programs for the information technology industries. These providers are able to adapt to the training needs of our companies and have funding systems in place to support the changing needs of the industry in the future.

“We wanted a market with high tech talent. The talent here now and to come in the future will fuel our growth in future years.”
— Bob DeRodes, Executive VP & CIO, The Home Depot

Austin Energy, a unique city-owned utility, has an ongoing commitment to reliability and redundancy for large power users in the Austin area, including, 24-7 chip manufacturing facilities, data centers and call center operations. Austin Energy offers district cooling, thermal energy storage, and distributive generation services to companies seeking alternatives to traditional power generation and works to promote green alternatives whenever possible. The utility sources power from various grids, helping ensure redundancy and has a program in place for substation development where needed. Equally important, Austin Energy remains competitive on rates. The City of Austin recently passed an ordinance to lower electric rates for large users by 2.5% if consumption reaches 25,000 kW for two out of the preceding six months and maintains an average load factor of 85% and above. Austin Energy publishes rates for commercial rate classes here: www.austinenergy.com/About%20Us/Rates/Commercial/index.htm.

ISO 9001 Certification for Electric Service Delivery: Austin Energy has become the first of any utility in the nation to earn ISO 9001 registration for electric service delivery. ISO (International Organization for Standardization) 9000 is a series of international quality standards designed to ensure that all activities related to providing and delivering a product or service are appropriately quality assured. To earn the registration, applicants must develop a Quality Management System that reflects standards of performance and continual improvement of processes and services to its customer, in this case, in the delivery of electric power. ISO 9001 is the most complete and demanding standard in the ISO 9000 series. Auditors from the worldwide entity that administers the ISO quality management program issued the registration on January 3, 2008. There are approximately 250,000 companies worldwide including 25,000 in the U.S. certified in the ISO 9000 series. Austin Energy transmission and distribution work units, however, are the first of any electric utility in the country to be so certified. Austin Energy plans to continue the ISO 9001 registration effort with their Customer Care business unit which includes the utility Customer Service Center, meter reading, billing and collections.

Data Center Efficiency Incentives: The Data Center Efficiency Program, part of the Power Saver^TM rebate program, covers a range of data centers (enterprise centers, corporate centers, or server closets) for facilities being built within Austin Energy's service area. Rebate payments are available up to $200,000 per site (per fiscal year) including any eligible bonus payments. The program's incentives are intended to reduce the added incremental costs associated with the specification and installation of high efficiency energy technologies such as massive array idle disk (MAID) storage systems, retrofitted server virtualization, chillers/cooling towers, uninterruptible power supplies (UPSs), thermal energy storage systems, and various custom technologies. The data center owner, design professional, contractor or other designated representative or agent is eligible to apply to Austin Energy for rebates on data center facilities.

Commercial Energy Management Rebate Program: Not only are data centers eligible for IT incentives such as Virtualization and MAID storage systems, but through the Commercial Energy Management Rebate Program they are eligible for incentives to increase the energy efficiency of their facilities. The maximum incentive is still $200,000 or 50% of the total job cost (including equipment, installation and tax), whichever is less. Data centers are also eligible for Solar Incentives and can participate in GreenChoice, Austin Energy's renewable energy program.

Other municipal electrical utilities in the Austin metro area include: Bastrop Power & Light, Georgetown Utility Systems, the City of Lockhart, and San Marcos Electric Utility. Where these city utilities, including Austin Energy, don’t go, there are three other providers available. Bluebonnet Electric Cooperative covers eastern rural Travis County, Bastrop County, eastern Hays County and eastern Williamson County. Pedernales Electric Cooperative offers service in the southwestern areas of the Austin metro, including Buda, Kyle, Dripping Springs, as well as western areas near Lake Austin and Lake Travis. TXU Energy handles Northern Williamson County including Round Rock and parts of Pflugerville, as well as Elgin to the East.

Real estate is well-priced and available. The Austin region supports a number of available buildings and land sites that provide data center users access to affordable, redundant power, multiple telecom providers, ready access to a talented workforce. Austin-Bergstrom International Airport's location just ten minutes from downtown affords sites around the metro with quick and easy access.

Data center buildings typically feature dual feed electric, redundant telecom and other amenities required by mission critical facilities. Spaces range from collocation facilities (such as Data Foundry and OnRamp) to Tier IV buildings including Digital Realty’s 75,000 sq. ft. MetCenter building that is designed specifically for data center users. YoungWoo is currently in the construction phase on 241,000 square feet of Tier III space in Norwood Park.

Land sites are found throughout the five-county region. In most industrially zoned areas, dual-feed from separate transformers from the same substation with diverse routing is possible. For high-level mission critical facilities, sites are available in Austin, Georgetown, Pflugerville, and San Marcos with dual-feed from separate substations in place that can accommodate Tier IV construction. Other sites can be made ready for this type of facility with negotiations with the local electric utility and city authorities.

Austin's MetCenter is one of the few data center parks in the country that features dual-feed electric service from separate substations that are fed from separate power sources in underground conduits. The park has two 400-megawatt on-site electric substations. Redundant water, fiber loops and over 12 telecom providers are also part of the special amenities offered in this state-of-the-art park.

Georgetown, located just north of Austin and home to Citicorp's new facility, has capacity for an immediate 25 megawatts from separate substations. Multiple telecom providers service the area.

For more information about our capabilities or to confidentially request information or a site search in our region, contact Charisse Bodisch, Vice President, Economic Development, at 512.322.5608 or cbodisch@austinchamber.com.

Greater Austin enjoys one of the world's most advanced, robust, and redundant telecommunications networks. Multiple national and regional fiber backbone providers, protected by SONET rings and Ethernet network architecture, including digital access control, connect all central offices in Austin. Fiber is virtually universal in all routes to customers. Fiber optic connections are available to most major buildings and industrial sites.

AT&T and Time Warner Telecom are the primary providers in the Austin area. Other providers include Grande Communications, Qwest and Verizon. Level 3 (formerly Broadwing) has a local network connecting to their national backbone fiber. With no fewer than 25 inter-exchange carrier POPs and LSOs, the city and surrounding regional cities are equipped to handle multiple redundancy needs. Some of the other providers you can do business with in Austin include AboveNet, Frontier, Global Crossings, Sprint, SunGard, Westel, and XO Communications.

Time Warner Telecom (TWTC) has a 100% optical fiber network that connects over 300 buildings in the Austin metro area via a 570 mile intra-city network that TWTC continues to grow. TWTC can build out fiber to site and also offers co-location services through two central office switching stations in geographically diverse Austin locations. Network security is increased through utilization of TWTC’s SONET (Synchronous Optical Network and Ethernet Architecture) rings, which act to reroute signals and self-heal the network in the event of disaster. Time Warner Telecom also owns and operates the Intercity DASH Network, an 828 mile fiber backbone connecting Dallas, Austin, San Antonio, and Houston. The DASH links the local network to long-haul networks and creates regional options for users.

Grande Communications, a homegrown T2 cable operator headquartered in San Marcos, operates 4,200 miles of fiber optic networks throughout the Austin area and 7 other major Texas markets. They offer a wide array of first class voice, data, and private networking services. The company's fiber network currently extends from Dallas to the Rio Grande Valley and back, with connections to Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana as well as connectivity to international telecommunications companies on the U.S.-Mexico border. Grande offers everything from individual telephone lines/trunks and high-speed broadband data onthrough voice/data T1's and switched Gigabit Metro-Ethernet services over reliable SONET based network infrastructure.

AT&T, with the headquarters of its Texas operations in Austin, has over 1,000 local technical professionals working to maintain a network spanning more than 140,000 fiber miles, with 23 local Central Office Switching stations, and two Austin area Long Distance and Internet Points of Presence. Also in Austin is AT&T Laboratories which has helped formulate some of the most modern communications technologies implemented by the telecom provider, including: Metropolitan Optical Networks (MON); Ethernet over SONET; Optical Ethernet Metropolitan Area Networks; Network Based Virtual Private Networks; VoIP including hosted options; Dedicated Internet Access over Ethernet; Wireless Fidelity 802.11; and Fibre Channel Metropolitan Area Networks.

AT&T provides a complete Managed Services suite including Network Management and Monitoring, Security Operations Management, Intrusion detection and testing, project management, and other professional IT services. In addition, AT&T is an equipment distributor for Cisco, Nortel, Avaya, Juniper, APC, Polycom, Tandberg; just to name a few.

Qwest, having recently acquired Austin’s OnFiber, operates a local fiber optic network throughout Austin and has an Austin POP connecting users to Qwest’s national backbone network.

Level 3 has a significant presence in Austin, offering long-haul fiber optic network access.

Local Contacts

AT&T
400 W 15th St.
Austin, TX 78701
512.870.2065
James (Jim) Shelgren, Regional VP - AT&T Texas

Level 3 (formerly Broadwing)
1122 Capital of Texas Hwy
Austin, TX 78746
512.742.3700
James Parker, VP Sales

Qwest
8303 N Mo Pac
Austin, TX 78759
512.338.5770
Kent Myatt, VP Sales

Time Warner Telecom
9229 Waterford Centre Blvd.
Austin, TX 78758
512.485.1700
Rick Brackeen, Sales Director

Sources of water in Central Texas are surface waters managed by the Lower Colorado River Authority, the Guadalupe-Blanco River Authority, and the Brazos River Authority and ground waters from the Edwards Aquifer and the Trinity Aquifer. Regional planning groups assuring water sustainability and reliability in Central Texas are the South Central Texas Regional Water Planning Group, the Lower Colorado Regional Water Planning Group, and the Brazos Water Planning Group.

The region's largest municipal supplier, the City of Austin Water Utility, meets the water needs of some of the region's largest industrial operations:

• The Austin Water Utility is committed to the highest quality level of water and wastewater service that meets and exceeds all State and Federal quality standards as well as reasonable customer expectations concerning cost, reliability, quality, and environmental sensitivity.
• The utility has extensive long-range water supply plans and has executed an agreement for a guaranteed water supply for the City's corporate limits and extraterritorial jurisdiction for the next 100 years.
• The utility draws water from the Colorado River into three water treatment plants that have a rated combined maximum capacity of 310 million gallons per day and a storage capacity of 167 million gallons. A new 50 million gallons per day water treatment plant is planned.
• The utility supplies approximately 3 billion gallons of water annually to six significant water users, four of which are semiconductor manufacturers.

Current City of Austin water and wastewater service rates are published here: www.ci.austin.tx.us/water/finmandef.htm.

Austin, in the heart of Central Texas, has an extremely low occurrence of natural disasters. Central Texas has a very low level of seismic risk (see USGS hazard maps: national and Texas) and has no reported incidents of earthquakes, tsunamis or hurricanes.

Austin is located outside the central United States region known as Tornado Alley (see illustrations in the NCDC's tornado climatology summary). Austin experiences an annual average of 43 days with thunderstorm activity per year.

Climate Normals

Exemplifying Austin’s market maturation in the data center field, are the wealth of support and ancillary businesses providing technology and services to local data centers.

• Active Power is an Austin-headquartered company specializing in backup power equipment for data centers. Active Power's patented flywheel technology became the world's first commercially viable mechanical battery.
• American Power Conversion: APC specializes in enterprise management solutions, offering a fully integrated, open-platform, vendor-neutral suite of software applications to manage a data center’s IT physical infrastructure throughout its entire lifecycle. APC recently acquired Austin’s homegrown NetBotz to further expand its product line in data center security.
• DPR Construction is a builder with roots in Austin that is well-versed in data center and sensitive facilities construction in the area.

IBM, AMD, Dell, Sun, Intel, Hewlett-Packard, Cisco as well as upstarts like ClearCube are staples of the Austin economy, proving the Austin labor market is well versed in the technology that drives large data centers.

• Dell offers a comprehensive suite of professional services for data center design, layout, deployment, and management as well as round the clock mission-critical support.
• Cisco Remote Operations Services, formerly NetSolve, offers remote security solutions for data center and server security.
• Gresham Enterprise Storage, headquartered in Austin, develops software to optimize storage resources in data centers.
• NetQoS, headquartered in Austin, offers network and data center optimization and security solutions products.
• Solarwinds recently relocated their headquarters to Austin, planning to grow a large presence here offering network management solutions.
• Univa UD, formerly United Devices, is a company that provides grid software and services that enable more efficient use of computing resources and power distribution.

• Alpheus Communications recently apportioned a large space within its its existing Austin hub facility for collocation and disaster recovery services. The Austin facility also acts as their primary hub for all Austin connectivity.
• Sungard Availability Services, formerly Inflow, operates a large NE Austin facility.
• Data Foundry offers managed Internet, enterprise data center, colocation and disaster recovery services through its South Austin data center.
• XO Communications has a website hosting data center with redundant fiber connections to major backbone providers. XO is also a local communications service provider.
• Rackspace Managed Hosting, as the name suggests, offers server space and support and hosting services for website management.
• Qwest offers managed data center solutions through sales offices in Austin.
• Dataside offers managed network services and customized enterprise data center space at its downtown Austin facility. Dataside's Austin facility is currently the only carrier neutral collocation facility in the Central Business District and is located in the protected capitol electrical grid, affording Dataside exceptional energy security.
• OnRamp Access provides all of the services necessary to build, deploy and manage Internet operations in the areas of colocation, managed servers, disaster recovery, web design/development and advanced Internet solutions. OnRamp’s state-of-the-art data center is located in Southeast Austin.
• Core NAP offers co-location and managed server services at its NW Austin data center.
• NetNation, a Canadian-based dedicated server web hosting services company recently located a data center in Austin. The company targets small to mid-sized companies.