Communications company opens data center downtown

Fairport, N.Y.-based Paetec Holding Corp., a Fortune 1000 company that provides data, voice, and Internet solutions to business-class customers nationwide, recently opened a new Midwestern regional data center in downtown Milwaukee.
The data center at 731 N. Jackson St. will serve as Paetec’s Midwstern hub, according to company spokesman Chris Miller.
Miller said Paetec considered a half-dozen cities before deciding upon Milwaukee for its regional hub.
“The location is ideal,” he said, citing Milwaukee’s proximity to Chicago. Many large Chicago corporations require their data centers to be housed in another city as a precaution for a local calamity or inconvenience, Miller said.
"We looked at many sites in the Midwest, but ultimately determined that this location in Milwaukee would best support the needs of our customers," said Jeff Howe, president of Paetec’s central region. "This new data center extends our unmatched support of customers’ ever-changing and more complex needs with regards to data storage, security, and the shift towards cloud computing."
The Milwaukee data center will provide customers with a secure facility for their critical data, networking, and communications infrastructure. Services will include space, power, and connectivity to private networks or the Internet. In addition, customers can work with Paetec to develop personalized hosted server and storage solutions. Value added services such as Data Backup and Recovery and Shared Web Hosting will also be available.
“Think of us AT&T without the cell phones. That’s what we do for businesses,” Miller said.
The data center has six employees, and the company also has a sales staff of about 30 employees in the same building.