Are Cincinnati Data Centers Facing Increased Competition?

Leading Cincinnati data center players including Equinix, CyrusOne, and CenturyLink are facing some increasing competition from their neighbors to the northeast in Columbus and to the northwest in Indianapolis.

The Columbus Data Center Scene

Ohio’s data center sales tax incentives have brought many new builds to the state, including a recent offer of tax incentives and seventy acres of land to encourage a data center build by Amazon in Dublin, Ohio, just outside of Columbus. This data center will bring many job opportunities and economic development to the Central Ohio area, including a $1.1 billion investment from Amazon.

Other data centers attracted to Central Ohio include Compass, Expedient, and Datacenter.BZ.

IBM has recently opened an advanced analytics center in the area as well.

The Columbus area is well known for its

• Support of technology companies
• Strong, reliable power grid
• Robust telecommunications fiber network
• Technical talent in the area

Advantages of Cincinnati

Though Columbus is a lucrative location for data centers in Ohio, Cincinnati offers a number of opportunities as well. This keeps Cincinnati competitive with other Midwestern cities like Indianapolis, Columbus, and Chicago. These factors include low and stable utility rates, green energy, and strong utility infrastructure.

Hamilton, part of the greater Cincinnati area, has strong utility services including a renewable power grid, water supply for data center cooling, and extensive fiber optic networks.

The Cincinnati area has a lower risk for natural disasters such as tornados, earthquakes, and hurricanes compared to other locations in the United States. The area also provides a number of job creation tax credits, loan funds, and economic development agreements -- and employs over thirty thousand IT professionals. Some of the top talent categories in the Cincinnati area include systems analysts, programmers, software developers, and network administrators.

With a talent pool like this, there are great reasons to locate data centers in Cincinnati. Services businesses abound in the area and make up about 50% of the industry demand.

Though technically in Kentucky, Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) recently moved its data center to Erlanger, Kentucky, just over the Ohio River from Cincinnati.

Cincinnati Bell owns most of CyrusOne, so they have a solid foundation of local ownership.

CyrusOne has data centers across the United States, including six locations in Cincy. It acknowledges that competition is good for business and the colocation sector in particular.

Why Cincinnati Data Centers Thrive

Opening a Cincinnati data center, or contracting the services of one of the existing providers in the area is a safe bet. The stable and renewable power supply in the area, as well as the reliable and strong telecommunications infrastructure in the area, are just the starts.

Local talent, government support, and tax incentives provide compelling reasons to consider the area to house your technology operations.

Have you investigated the Cincinnati area for building a new data center? Tell us about it in the Comments section.

And if you need to fill up your colocation space with profitable clients in your Cincinnati data center, be sure to download your free copy of Lead Generation Best Practices for Colocation Data Centers.