As practice director for an Oracle consulting company in Oklahoma City, John Parsons was on occasion asked to source commercial data centers for clients. Since no world-class offerings were available in Oklahoma, he was forced to refer the business to outside the state.
A year later, Parsons decided to try and fill that void by teaming up with a highly experienced engineering and operations group and taking over the Williams Communications facility in Oklahoma City.
Perimeter Technology Center was established in 2002 to operate a commercial data center to manage information technology infrastructure for companies by offering co-location of computer servers, monitored and managed network services and information technology services.
"There was a lack of local competition and a sound business case for the proliferation of the management of IT infrastructure through commercial data center services in the long-term," said Parsons, chief executive officer of the Oklahoma City-based company.
Perimeter Technology's Oklahoma City facility at 4100 Perimeter Circle is comprised of approximately 13,000 square feet of traditional office space with 3,500 square feet of raised and anti-static flooring. The existing data center is capable of housing more than 100 server cabinets along with space for shared wide area network connectivity needs. The center also has full satellite downlink capabilities with 15 dish antennas, both roof and ground mounted.
Up-time for the center over the past two years has been an astounding 99.999 percent. This has been achieved through redundant bandwidth connections to multiple backbone providers, dual redundancies throughout the internal network and a full power backup system including a UPS and diesel generator that will support the entire data center at full capacity, the network operations center and all adjoining office space.
Earlier this year, Perimeter expanded to Tulsa with the acquisition of a downtown facility that once belonged to the New Jersey-based telecom company Genuity. The 16,500-square-foot Tulsa location at 322 E. Archer St. employs three people but could expand to 12 to 15 people by the end of 2006, according to Parsons. Perimeter Technology has 13 employees at the Oklahoma City facility.
Revenues have climbed 712 percent since the first year of operation to 2004. Parsons attributes the success partially to the lack of competition in this state and region but also to an experienced and skilled staff with "great communication skills" as well as product and service offerings with substantial return on investment for its more than 100 clients.
"Our client base represents dozens of industries and literally hundreds of SIC codes. The common thread among our clients is their use of information technology in critical areas of their business, thus requiring a high level of IT competency and resulting service from their internal staff and external partners," Parsons said.
As far as short-term expansion plans, the company looks to continue its client acquisition throughout Oklahoma, northwest Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri and north Texas.
"In the mid-term, we will look to facility acquisition and key employee hiring in Tier 2 & 3 cities in this region. In the long-term, evaluation between national company expansions through independent operators, franchising or company-owned facilities," he said. |
