Network provider building data center

Network provider building data center

Courtesy US Signal

A local network provider has begun work on a new data center on the state’s east side.

Grand Rapids-based US Signal said last week it started engineering and construction on the data center in Van Buren Township, on Haggerty Road in the I-275 and I-94 corridor.

The company expects to open the data center around the end of 2019.

The facility will add 100,000 square feet of data center space in greater Detroit.

The company cited customers’ increased adoption of cloud-first, hybrid and off-premises data center strategies driving its need for the facility.

“As organizations develop hybrid cloud strategies in Michigan and across the United States, they often seek to alleviate the burden of owning and operating their own data center,” said Dave Wisz, EVP of operations, US Signal.

“The new greater Detroit data center will increase US Signal’s data center availability and enable organizations throughout the region to take advantage of both geographic diversity and lower latency because of the adjacency between their office and their co-located equipment and cloud hosting services.”

The project was also initiated to accommodate customer growth and support the region’s growing business and technology communities.

The data center will be the fourth facility for the company in Michigan, which has two data centers in Grand Rapids and one in Southfield.

US Signal’s data centers offer customers connectivity, cloud hosting, co-location, data protection and disaster recovery solutions.