Kansas City Data Center Grand Opening

“The Wednesday opening of LightEdge Solutions Inc., the anchor tenant for a new underground data center campus in Kansas City’s SubTropolis business park, is expected to be the start of something big.” – Kansas City Business Journal

The Grand Opening of LightEdge’s Kansas City Data Center and SubTropolis Technology Center took place on Wednesday, April 16^th.  A press conference and ribbon cutting ceremony were followed by tours of the facility and networking for the 300+ guests in attendance. Dignitaries in attendance included Missouri Governor Jay Nixon, Kansas City, Missouri Mayor Sly James, Presiding Clay County Commissioner Pam Mason, KCP&L Vice President Chuck Caisley, Augie Cruciotti, managing director of The Anschutz Investment Co., and members of the Hunt family including Clark Hunt, Lamar Hunt, Jr., and Sharron Hunt, owners of Hunt Midwest.

LightEdge is the anchor tenant of STC, which is owned and operated by Hunt Midwest Real Estate Development. The new facility is the fourth data center operated by LightEdge throughout the Midwest. Additional information about the new facility can be found on our website.

See a video that Missouri Economic Development created recapping the event here.

Check out the time lapse video of our construction progress at the data center here.

Additional photos from the event can be found on our Facebook page here.

Questions to Ask Yourself When Selecting a Data Center: Will the data center structure exceed anything Mother Nature throws at it?

Underground data center will be rock solid, literally

When choosing a location for your data center, consider the environmental risk associated with the geographic location. Earthquakes, hurricanes and tornados can all cause outages. Even so, it is possible to design and build a facility to withstand practically any disaster.

But the cost to harden the facility will be significant – if not cost prohibitive – for most organizations. For that reason, companies seeking ultra-secure hosting that will survive any eventuality are increasingly taking operations underground.

LightEdge is currently building phase one of an underground data center that is located in SubTropolis Technology Center (STC) – one hundred feet below ground in Kansas City, Mo. Made possible by 270-million-year-old limestone formations that are unique to certain areas of the Midwest, STC provides a subterranean fortress.

Because STC is naturally hardened by Mother Nature, protection from natural disasters is built-in, without the added cost needed to fortify surface buildings. Plus construction costs are less to begin with since the limestone floor and ceiling already exist. Our facility is built to Tier III standards and is located within a solid limestone structure six times stronger than concrete. You can forget about the potential business impact of a tornado, 500 year flood, earthquake or EMP. Our facility is virtually impervious to it all.

In addition to the inherent benefits the underground location offers, Kansas City is home to one of the most advanced telecommunications networks; is ranked one of the best cities for constant, uninterrupted power service; and has a deep talent pool of IT professionals thanks to the 5,700 tech companies – including Sprint, Garmin, DST Systems and Cerner – located in the area.

LightEdge’s Kansas Center data center is scheduled to open during the Spring of this year. Check out our Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and LinkedIn pages for the most recent photos of our construction progress. Check out our website or download the Kansas City Data Center spec sheet to learn more about the facility here.

 

LightEdge Sponsors KVC Walk Me Home 5K Supporting Foster Families In Kansas

We are pleased to announce that LightEdge will be one of the sponsors for the 2^nd annual KVC Walk Me Home 5K Run/Walk fundraising event. This event supporting foster care in Kansas City will be held at Theater in the Park within Shawnee Mission Park at 7:30 a.m. on May 11, 2013.

KVC Behavioral HealthCare, Inc. is an integrated human service provider committed to enriching the lives of children and families throughout Kansas. The Walk Me Home 5K was developed to raise awareness to foster care and to raise funds that will support the programs and services for foster care in Kansas. Walk Me Home supports more than 1,300 children that are currently in foster care in the Kansas City metro area. “We are excited to build on the momentum of last year’s Walk Me Home 5K and are so grateful for community partners like LightEdge whose support enriches the lives of countless families and children in our community,” Chad Anderson, president of KVC Behavioral HealthCare, Inc., said.

LightEdge is excited to be one of the sponsors for the event to help raise funds and awareness for such an amazing cause.  “Supporting local organizations is a continued effort at LightEdge. We are so excited to support such an outstanding organization like KVC by being involved as a sponsor this year,” said Kansas City Market Director Mark Dodds.

For additional information please contact Blair Patterson at 515-471-1119, email bpatterson@lightedge.com or visit http://www.firstgiving.com/walkmehome/kvc2013.

LightEdge Hires Tony Lux as part of Kansas City Consulting Expansion

20-year networking and virtualization veteran hired to meet Cloud IT growth in the market

Overland Park, KS, September 25, 2012 – LightEdge is pleased to announce that the company has hired Tony Lux as Lead Consultant and Sales Engineer for its Kansas City office.  This newly created position will enable LightEdge to better react to the rapidly growing need for Cloud IT services and IT consulting solutions in the greater Kansas City area.

Tony comes to LightEdge with over 20 years of experience in Information Technology with specific expertise in Virtualization based on VMware vSphere and VMware Site Recovery Manager, Cisco Call Manager VoIP phone systems, Cisco-based networking and Microsoft Exchange/SQL/Dynamics.  He has a long-standing reputation in the Kansas City IT community and currently participates on the Kansas City VMUG (VMware User Group) Steering Committee and is the Treasurer for the Microsoft Dynamics SL Users Group.  This year Tony was awarded the status of vExpert for his knowledge, leadership and passion for VMware solutions.

 “Tony is a great addition to our Kansas City team due to his incredible knowledge depth, consultative approach to customer interactions and his reputation in the greater Kansas City market,” said T. J. Bangs, Vice President of Sales.  “Tony will be objectively serving our clients to find each customer’s balance between Cloud Services and On-premise deployments with the ultimate goal of making sure our customers are efficiently and effectively utilizing their IT resources.”

LightEdge operates five data centers in the Midwest and manages cloud computing platforms for over 1,500 business customers throughout the United States.  The Kansas City data center is a redundant node to the LightEdge network infrastructure that extends our full suite of Cloud services to the Kansas City market.  For more information on LightEdge Cloud Computing or Consulting services, visit www.lightedge.com.

 

About LightEdge Solutions

LightEdge Solutions is a customer-centric cloud computing and consulting company devoted to solving the IT issues of businesses nationwide. By utilizing our economies of scale, connections with world-class vendors and our own internal passion for engineering, LightEdge allows its customers to “plug in” to enterprise-grade IT solutions that maximize uptime and performance, yet fit into their budget. For more information, visit www.lightedge.com.

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LightEdge Solutions Sponsors Cloud Intelligence Conference in Kansas City

Kansas City, MO, March 21, 2012 – LightEdge Solutions is pleased to announce it will be a Gold Level Sponsor of the 2012 Kansas City Cloud Intelligence Conference to be held at the Overland Park Convention Center on April 12, 2012.  The conference will be hosted by Centriq Training, Kansas City’s premier I.T. training company, in conjunction with Microsoft.

This one-day conference will cover a variety of powerful network computing information management strategies for businesses of all levels. Some topics will include Public, Private and Hybrid Cloud Strategies, Cloud Security, Virtualization, Migration and Information Architecture.

LightEdge Vice President, T. J. Bangs, will be a featured speaker for the event.  Attendees will have the choice of four tracks, with 4 sessions each, in the 2012 Cloud Intelligence Conference including:

• Cloud Roadmaps and Overviews for Executives
• Infrastructure as a Service (IAAS)
• Software as a Service (SAAS)
• Platform as a Service (PAAS)

This event is ideal for IT professionals, business decision makers and executives from all types of technology backgrounds. Seating is limited. To learn more or register for this event, please visit www.centriq.com/CloudIntelligence .

Please contact Scott Riedel at sriedel@lightedge.com for more information or questions about the event!

About LightEdge Solutions

LightEdge Solutions is a customer-centric cloud computing and consulting company devoted to solving the IT issues of businesses nationwide. By utilizing our economies of scale, connections with world-class vendors and our own internal passion for engineering, LightEdge allows its customers to “plug in” to enterprise-grade IT solutions that maximize uptime and performance, yet fit into their budget. For more information, visit www.lightedge.com.

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Google’s move in Council Bluffs a high-speed leap to future?

Google is seeking federal permission to put a satellite antenna farm near its Council Bluffs data center, a move that experts speculate would enable the California search giant to receive movies and TV shows that could be bundled with the super-fast Internet service it’s developing in Kansas City.

The reason cities competed for the project is clear: The high-speed access will likely mean more businesses will be attracted to Kansas City, and existing businesses will be able to operate more efficiently.

LightEdge Solutions, a Des Moines-based technology consulting firm, plans to open a permanent office in Overland Park, Kan., on April 1 to take advantage of the newly laid fiber in the metro area.

“We consider (Google Fiber) a disruptive technology,” said LightEdge spokesman Scott Riedel. “It’s bringing in so much access that people will start doing things differently.”

Riedel said the core services his company provides, such as cloud computing, information technology and data center consulting, will benefit as more companies move to the area. He said the hope is those businesses will then seek consultations with his firm.

“The idea of Google coming in and giving people access to that enables them to rethink how they are doing things,” he said. “Having Google there and disrupting the market and changing the paradigm will benefit us.”

Google chose to come to Iowa in 2007, when it announced it would build a data center that state officials estimate cost $800 million, so far the largest capital investment in the state’s history.

Google said it chose Council Bluffs for the data center because it sits on a rich backbone of the fiber-optic cables; it has reliable and inexpensive power, which is a tremendous need for data centers; and a strong pool of qualified workers.

Read the entire story at DesMoinesRegister.com

LightEdge Solutions signs lease in Kansas City area LightEdge Solutions, drawn by Google, signs lease in Kansas City area

A Des Moines-based information technology company with its eyes on Google Inc.’s incoming ultra-fast network has selected a permanent sales office space in Corporate Woods in Overland Park.

LightEdge Solutions Inc.  has signed a three-year lease for roughly 2,500 square feet at 9393 W. 110th St., effective April 1.

Four employees will move into the office in April, but LightEdge, which is spending $40,000 on space improvements, plans to hire about six more employees for the location, marketing director Scott Riedel said.

Jennifer Carroll of Stoltz Management, which runs Corporate Woods, represented both the landlord and tenant in the transaction.

LightEdge entered the Kansas City market in September as a way to test a new company model for metropolitan locations.

The company, which needs a lot of bandwidth to provide managed IT and cloud computing services, identified Kansas City because of the 1-gigabit broadband network Google is building in Kansas City and Kansas City, Kan., and because of its proximity to LightEdge’s Iowa headquarters.

The company, which has built data centers in Des Moines, Minneapolis and Moline, Ill., tentatively is planning to build a data center in Kansas City — a potential investment of $18 million to $20 million — if customer needs warrant more data center space.

In the meantime, LightEdge is leasing local data center space from 1102 Grand LLC in Kansas City, where it plans to access the Google Fiber network.

Read the article at Kansas City Business Journal

Google helps spur LightEdge Solutions to use Kansas City as test market

Alyson Raletz Reporter – Kansas City Business Journal

Iowa-based information technology company LightEdge Solutions Inc.  has identified Kansas City as a test market where it will develop a new model for future metropolitan locations.

Among the reasons LightEdge picked Kansas City are its proximity to the company’s Des Moines headquarters, its mix of businesses and the coming Google ultra-high-speed network.

“Our managed cloud IT services require accessibility and bandwidth,” LightEdge Solutions Chairman and CEO Jim Masterson said in an email. “Google’s presence will help enable the adoption of the service model that we are promoting.”

LightEdge focuses on managed IT services, collocation space in data centers, cloud computing and reselling IT hardware. It had roughly $25 million in revenue in 2010, Marketing Director Scott Riedel said.

In addition to Des Moines, the company has offices in Cedar Rapids, Iowa; Omaha, Neb.; Minneapolis; and Moline, Ill.

The company’s owner, Anschutz Investment Co., which Denver industrialist Phil Anschutz leads, targeted Kansas City as a place to build up infrastructure plus a sales and marketing force that LightEdge aims to duplicate in the next 18 to 24 months in other markets. Anschutz founded Qwest Communications International Inc., which sold last year to CenturyLink

Read the rest of the article