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TULSA – With its Tulsa
Business Continuity Center now finished,
fast-growing Perimeter Technology intends to
add a second Oklahoma City data center in
its quest to emerge a regional power.
“Over the next four to
five years we’ll have five facilities,” said
Stan Chase, chief operating officer of
Oklahoma City-based Perimeter. “We see
substantial growth in our forecast.”
The private company owned
by Chase and six other partners saw its
revenues double last year to $5 million.
With physical work on the 36,000-square-foot
Tulsa facility now complete, at a total
investment estimated at $3 million, Chase
conservatively expects the profitable
company to raise its revenues by up to $2
million this year.
Perimeter now provides
“lockbox” protection for 30 company data
centers in Tulsa. Now that the two-year
renovation is complete, Chase wants to add
140 more server racks to bring his client
base up to about 100 firms. Steven Curtis,
director of sales engineering for the Tulsa
office, expects that to take up to three
years.
“That’s our biggest
challenge,” said Chase, “getting companies
to turn loose of their data centers.”
In comparison, Perimeter
serves about 80 companies in Oklahoma City’s
36,000-square-foot center, about 80 percent
of its capacity. That explains its expansion
plan.
Launched in March 2003,
Chase said that Perimeter reached a positive
cash-flow position within its first year. It
drew benefits from the already advanced
state of its 4100 Perimeter Center Dr.
office, a former hub for iBeam Broadcasting
and Williams Communications.
“We had millions of
dollars invested in the facility, but we
didn’t have to pony up any of that,” said
Chase.
Perimeter enjoyed similar
good fortune when it acquired Tulsa’s 322 E.
Archer St. facility, formerly used by the
telecom arm of General Electric. Over the
last two years, Perimeter has proceeded to
develop the center into a reflection of its
Oklahoma City base.
Even so, due to the
constant need to upgrade, Chase said
Perimeter has invested millions into both of
its facilities – and will again with its
second Oklahoma City complex, a projected
20,000-square-foot structure still under
development.
All of the infrastructure
that makes the Perimeter centers attractive
precautionary measures – in Tulsa, that
ranges from 13-inch-thick walls and multiple
security layers to clean power redundancies
and 140 tons of cooling power – also carry a
high cost. Chase estimated its operating
budget at $1 million a year.
But that also proves
Perimeter’s strength, since it pales against
the combined operating costs of all its
client data centers.
“That’s why we’re working
very hard with companies to educate them to
get out of the business of data centers,”
Chase said.
Even in this
security-minded age regulated by
Sarbanes-Oxley and the Health Insurance
Portability and Accountability Act of 1996,
“the economics of scale work against it,” he
said. “It’s a very expensive proposition to
keep a data center operational.”
On Jan. 19, Perimeter
finished outfitting the Tulsa office’s
17,000 square feet of business continuity
office space, complete with showers and
break room, for when office staffs must
relocate at times of emergency. Capable of
seating up to 450 people, all the space
awaits now are some 15 additional tables and
30 chairs.
Perimeter already has a
long-term lease for half of that office.
“It can help you sustain
your business operations. That’s all it’s
for,” said Chase. “I pray to God we’ll never
have to need them.”
Its digital communications
area now claims 4,200 square feet with a
raised floor, cooled by seven 20-ton HVAC
units. Perimeter intends to reorganize its
neighboring carrier-neutral collocation room
to accommodate more customer servers. The
company also offers the ability for off-site
storage, if the customer desires.
Perimeter runs its Public
Service Co. of Oklahoma electrical feed
through automated transfer switches and
batteries that stabilize the current. If at
any time the PSO line fails, battery power
fills the 11-second interval before an
indoor Caterpillar generator kicks in, fed
by a 4,000-gallon diesel fuel tank.
If the often-tested
generator somehow fails, the batteries can
power the complex alone for almost four
days, depending on the operational load –
with a second generator hookup available to
ease the stress. It also maintains
maintenance contracts on its generator,
switches and batteries.
Chase expects the second
Oklahoma City center, projected to come
online within 18 months, will duplicate all
of these features except for the continuity
space. With Sarbanes-Oxley encouraging “best
effort” protection measures, he foresees not
just large public firms, but smaller
companies to realize the advantages of
maintaining their data centers in protected
facilities like these.
“That’s another reason why
I think our business has taken off,” he
said. “Companies can pass that
responsibility off to us.”
Chase credited the backing
of BOK Financial for his company’s
foundation, as well as a private equity firm
providing expansion capital.
Perimeter draws revenue
not just from leasing data equipment storage
space or continuity office space, but also
from offering professional data services –
ranging from wide area network design and
implementation to managed firewall services,
disaster recovery consulting and network
security consulting. It will even help
companies establish their own secure data
centers, “although I strongly try to
encourage them otherwise.”
“Our biggest competition
is internal IT staffs,” he said. “It’s not
other data servers.”
A partnership born of fire
TULSA – Within its first
two months of business, the Oklahoma City
computer services firm Rock Island Group
found itself facing a nightmare task.
Suffering a near-mortal
wound from the 1995 bombing, its Murrah
building home and vital computer systems
literally destroyed, the Federal Employees
Credit Union turned to Rock Island for
resuscitation.
“I asked him what he
wanted,” Stan Chase recalled of his talks
with Raymond Stroud, then vice president and
comptroller at the FECU, “and he said, ‘I
want it back the way it was.’”
Even after almost 12
years, Chase still pauses when thinking
about that daunting task.
“We started from scratch,”
said Chase, now chief operating officer of
Perimeter Technology. “And we had them up
and operating in 48 hours. That was nothing
but the grace of God; I don’t know how we
did that.”
That emergency effort led
Rock Island to refocus on data management
and recovery. After several corporate
permutations, Rock Island’s core executives
continue that focus as Perimeter Technology.
“This operation’s
engineering team has been together 11
years,” Chase said. “You prepare for the
worst and you pray for nothing to happen.
But you want to be ready if it does.”
Along those lines,
Perimeter’s seven partners made their firm a
success by building on their data core
competencies.
“I hate to read an article
where it says, ‘Stan Chase built …,’” he
said. “Stan Chase didn’t build any of this.
He had partners in all of that.”
They include Chief
Executive John Parsons, Vice President of
Sales Heath Rutz, Vice President of
Operations Todd Currie, Vice President of
Engineering Terry Morrison, Vice President
of Technology Brad Thomas, and Vice
President of Marketing Russ Koch.
“We stay focused on our
core competencies,” said Chase. “We stay
focused on providing service to our
customers. And that’s all it is.”
– Kirby Lee Davis
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