North Jersey: New home for data centers

Data centers are popping up across the country as a never-ending stream of new Internet applications strains the nation's information storage capabilities. Worldwide demand for data centers is expected to rise 12 percent just this year, and 17 percent in 2012, according to Tieri Research.

The New York Times reported last week that northern New Jersey is becoming a hot spot for data center location, with its proximity to New York City and the financial center of the United States. The New York Stock Exchange is expected to relocate most of its data servers and those of its financial customers to a new site in Bergen County that will provide an unprecedented level of security, both physical and virtual.

And relocation is the name of the game for data centers everywhere. Last month, Facebook announced plans to build a 147,000-square-foot data center in central Oregon. The storage facility will accommodate 350 million Facebook users. Another new data center is underway in Clifton, N.J., by Credit Suisse. It's a 285,000-square-foot data center that will be opened next year.

"We're still in the beginnings of the growth of new business models that will change the way we do business and change the way we live," Hossein Fateh, chief executive of DuPont Fabros tells the Times. "That's just going to mean more and more demand for data center space."

For more on data centers moving to the Garden State:
- see the New York Times article

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