Data Foundry
Southern Hospitality Meets the Data Center in High-Growth Texas Markets

The data center market in Texas continues to evolve, meeting the ever-increasing demand for colocation space. Fifty-four Fortune 500 companies are now headquartered in the Lone Star State. Austin and Houston continue to experience constant growth. 6.5 million people call the Houston area home, and the Austin/San Antonio corridor has nearly 5 million residents.

Houston’s primary economic growth engines are the energy and healthcare sectors, where companies seek to lease space from high-availability, high-security data centers rather than leverage capital to build their own.

Austin is a growing tech hub for enterprises and start-ups. According to the Austin Business Journal—Texas invests 60 percent of venture capital into Austin, and VC investment in Austin was up 19 percent last year. With over 50 acres of strategically selected fiber-dense properties in Austin and Houston, Data Foundry functions as an ideal data center partner for growing companies wanting to reach vibrant Texas markets.

In addition to seeing a trend of companies moving to Texas, Data Foundry has worked with companies seeking to move off premises for the flexibility to scale-up as needed without dealing with the slow real-estate process. Data Foundry’s purpose-built data center campuses provide growing firms with dual and diverse power, water and fiber lines, land for expansion, and multiple Megawatts of untapped power capacity.

“We’ve seen out-of-state companies wanting to deploy closer to users as the demand for IoT technologies grows,” says Mark Noonan, CRO. Data Foundry’s data centers offer access to multiple network carriers and cloud providers, allowing companies to reduce long-haul network costs and latency. “We’ve also seen growth in the AI market,” says Noonan. Infrastructure for AI deployments has to meet high-density power and cooling requirements. “We meet these needs, offering 20 kW of power to each conventional air-cooled rack and 50+ kW to water-cooled racks.”

With roots as one of the first 50 ISPs, and the operation of a VPN sister company (VyprVPN), Data Foundry’s service provider experience helped them acquire first-hand knowledge of what companies need from data center providers. That’s how the company built its reputation in the colocation space as high-touch. “In a recent customer survey, most of our customers said communication and customer service are what we do best,” says Joel Reyes, Director of Product. “Many data centers function like real-estate firms, but we distinguish ourselves in that we are service-focused rather than real-estate focused,” says Edward Henigin, CTO.

Data Foundry does not outsource to contractors and maintains an in-house team of certified technicians, network engineers, and electricians

Data Foundry’s facilities are staffed 24/7/365. Unlike many colocation providers, they do not outsource to contractors; they maintain an in-house team of certified technicians, network engineers, and electricians. Data Foundry’s leadership believes this results in greater accountability. “Our customers compliment us on how knowledgeable and helpful our data center staff is,” says Reyes. Data Foundry is capable of handling deployments for both small and large enterprises. The company’s infrastructure experts also evaluate the power, and cooling requirements to provide custom solutions.

Forging ahead, Data Foundry plans to expand its campuses within its primary sites in Austin and Houston. The Houston data center has a full-capacity potential of 350,000 sq feet of data center space with 175,000 sq feet of raised floor. In Austin, Data Foundry has two primary adjacent sites—Texas 1 and Texas 2. The facilities have a combined full-capacity of 780,000 square-feet with 390,000 square-feet of which is raised the floor, with land remaining for expansion.