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.

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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

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