Why Atlanta? Key Considerations for Landing Your IT Infrastructure in the Atlanta Market
In the last several years, the greater Atlanta area has seen tremendous economic growth. With the fourth-largest concentration of Fortune 500 companies in the U.S., it has proven itself a major business hub. Alpharetta, in particular, which became its own city in 2014, is largely considered the Tech Capital of the South. More than 700 technology companies call Alpharetta home, including verticals in fintech, healthcare, insurance and biotech. Alpharetta also has 25 million square feet of office space, making up 10.4% of the greater Atlanta metro’s large office inventory.
Here’s why Atlanta is a great option when it comes to the location of your infrastructure:
Mild weather – Atlanta has more temperate weather than other areas of the south, like Florida, making it a strong position for a disaster recovery site. The high concentration of data centers in Atlanta supports traffic that needs to move out of hurricane and other natural disaster zones.
Rich fiber – There’s a fiber-rich point of presence (PoP) that was built in Atlanta intentionally because of all of the rail lines, providing a rich interconnection ecosystem that services all of the Southeast. Atlanta is the gateway for all of the network traffic traversing the southeast and coming out of Florida and the majority of the east to west network traffic goes through Atlanta.
Skilled workforce and innovative community – There are 57 colleges and universities in the Atlanta region, making it rich with talent. Tech Alpharetta, an innovation hub, is home to startup incubators, tech events and a strategic board made up primarily of business owners in that area. There are also a number of technology and media companies that call Atlanta home.
Edge ecosystem – Because Atlanta is such a major hub, edge deployment has been quickly accelerating there. Providers like Flexential are partnering up with edge data center operators to enable edge compute and connectivity. So, customers who colocate in Atlanta will be able to move out to sites in other regions – where they can be at the edge.
There are many different data center providers in the Atlanta region, so how do you choose the right one? Many can offer great space and power, but only a few can provide a hybrid IT solution, supporting your network connectivity, data protection, disaster recovery and private and public cloud requirements all under one roof. In today’s world, the network is as critical as power, and the Flexential Interconnection Platform provides a fabric of connectivity solutions far greater than any other provider. Work with a customer-focused provider with a national platform that can scale as your business scales. Look for a partner with the right team, the right services and the right operational support model to support you on your IT journey.
Flexential’s Atlanta – Alpharetta Expansion
Flexential provides exceptional colocation, connectivity and compliance IT solutions in the heart of Alpharetta’s tech corridor, with a data center complex featuring 2N power redundancy and N+1 cooling redundancy. Flexential has had a presence in the Atlanta region for 20 years and will continue to grow alongside its customers there. In January 2021, it expanded its Alpharetta data center by 20,000 square feet in order to meet customers’ evolving IT needs.
Flexential has two interconnected data centers in the Atlanta area within 15 miles of one another. They are part of a national platform that interconnects all of its data centers, from Philadelphia to Phoenix, Portland to Fort Lauderdale, and everywhere in between.
Tim Parker
Tim is the vice president of network strategy at Flexential, where he is responsible for guiding the company's interconnection ecosystem and developing network strategies and architectures for Flexential's HybridEdge Strategy.