As the IT industry evolves at an incredibly fast rate, enterprises continue to realize the need to shift their infrastructure mindset away from on-premises and consider modern colocation facilities as a larger component of their IT strategy. In an effort to save valuable time, costs, and space, many large enterprises are increasingly looking to move their in-house IT operations to colocation facilities that have the network-enabled footprint to house the workloads. As such, it is safe to say that there’s more to colocation than just housing servers and networking equipment in a data center; today, colocation providers play an integral role in improving the IT operations of companies and ultimately scale their business.
One such company, Jesup-based Heartland Technology Data Center (HTDC), is dedicated to providing clients with robust colocation services along with superior connectivity through its private fiber network and infrastructure. In a conversation with the editorial team at CIO Applications, Tony Lang, CEO of Heartland Technology Data Center, discusses at length how his company is equipping clients with the benefits of a state-of-the-art colocation facility coupled with carrier-neutral fiber connections and blended internet services to ensure reliable network connectivity.
Our mother company, Heartland Technology, has been operating as a telephone service provider since 1902 in Iowa. In 2011, we, at Heartland Technology, undertook a $12 million fiber to the home (FTTP) project, whereby we also invested the money to increase our overall reach. With strategic construction, we were able to connect with large carriers across the U.S. At the end of the FTTP project, we discerned that the ISP side was going strong in the industry, but phone and video components were blurring into obsolescence. Following this, we worked on a large research project to identify and implement smart ways to expand the best elements of our core company, which can be profitable both short and long term, while adding a new line of revenue.
Through our partnership with global ISPs like Cogent and Hurricane, we were able to capitalize on our largest revenue generator, the internet. We acquired some land at Jesup, Iowa, which provided us with an ideal strategic location in the center of five major metropolitans along with the benefit of the low power rate of the Midwest. We had three clear advantages—the physical land, internet at a premium price, and low-cost utilities. To build the data center, we teamed up with Schneider Electric. Their engineers flew in from across the U.S. and helped us design and build the facility. We broke ground in 2018, and by late 2019, we had a Tier 3 data center ready. We knew that our key clients (carriers) would be our anchor tenants, and as such, it was necessary to build our facility in accordance with Tier 3 standards and above.
With the help of Tier 4 power, fiber infrastructure redundancy, and other factors, we successfully established HTDC and opened our doors in late 2019, entering into 2020. From humble beginnings as a small rural carrier with roots in ISP, we have grown quickly to be able to service anybody, anywhere. Which are the prime industries you get the most traction from?
With our carrier hotel, we serve numerous carriers—both physical carriers and cellular companies. We have also expanded our footprint to the enterprise side with a sharp focus on certain verticals like manufacturing, finance, insurance, and education. With our extensive experience in fiber connections, which has been our focus since inception, we ensure reliable network connectivity for our clients—either with the help of our partners or by custom building it. We are playing to our strengths by leveraging our premium physical location and a strong team of fiber splicing engineers. If we need to connect to an existing carrier or even build the whole fiber infrastructure for our clients, we have the talent to design and build it. This has turned out to be a big advantage for some of our clients with limited carrier options in their regions. We have been able to build carrier-neutral fiber connections and help them connect with a desired carrier while also equipping them with disaster recovery and business continuity services through our facility. We have also partnered with Locknet, an E.O. Johnson company, to provide managed services to our clients.
Please elaborate on the process you follow when it comes to delivering results to your clients.
We are nimble in our approach and are exclusively focused on driving value for our clients. As part of our customer engagement strategy, the first step is to sit and discuss our clients’ technology needs. We try and meet as many of the needs as possible and also bring in our partners to fill the gaps and provide our clients with solutions that cover all their needs. We then provide a tailored quote for all the solutions we can offer, and our clients can choose the services they want. Our team members, Shawn Westpfahl, VP of Business Development along with our CTO, Jesse Havlik oversees the whole process to ensure that all of clients’ needs are met. We conduct quarterly meetings with our clients, wherein we offer a free consultation to help them with future projects and strengthen their business.
Could you provide a case study where you helped your client overcome their challenges and attain the desired outcome?
One of our clients, a manufacturing company in the Waterloo/Cedar Falls region, nearly 10-12 miles away from our data center, had access to only two carriers in their region. The company was challenged with slow growth as they were facing various internet issues. Among their multiple sites, one is here in Jesup. Using our partners, along with our infrastructure and fiber connections, we were able to fill the 10-mile gap and connect all of their campuses and provide premier access to Cogent, Hurricane, and some of the top Tier 1 providers to get them the bandwidth they wanted, at the price they wanted. Since then, the company has added more sites and also built a DR facility. We helped them overcome the outages they were facing with their previous carriers and save millions of dollars. When the storm hit, HTDC never went down because of all the redundancies we had, ensuring zero downtime and complete business continuity for our client.
What does the future hold for HTDC?
For HTDC, the emphasis has always been on “doing what we do best.” Unlike many other data center service providers that try to manage everything in one company, we have narrowed down our focus to building a top-of-the-line physical infrastructure and network that won’t fail our clients. We are adding partnerships to expand our physical network. At the same, we are closely observing market trends in terms of colocation, on-premise, cloud services, and adapting to them to further bolster our position in the industry.