A local company that provides a fully redundant, state-of-the-art data center and high-level data security for clients has been sold to a Greenville, South Carolina, information technology company.
Immedion LLC has purchased Data Cave and its 86,400-square-foot facility in Columbus from founder and entrepreneur Angie May. May and her husband David established Data Cave in 2008, after a massive flood had damaged homes and businesses throughout Columbus.
Immedion plans to retain Data Cave’s current four-person workforce and may add additional employees in the future, said Jenny Skipper, Immedion director of marketing and communications.
May said it was time for her family to consider having a larger presence taking over Data Cave in order for it to move the facility to the next level.
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“Data Cave is a phenomenal facility and it has been doing really well. But from a personal standpoint and for our future family plans, it was time for us to move our business focus back to Analytical Engineering Inc. (AEI),” she said. “Data Cave needed a larger presence than what we could provide in Columbus and the products we could offer,” she said.
The new owners said Data Cave customers will now be able to access Immedion’s enterprise and colocation facilities and a suite of high-performance Cloud services, Skipper said.
The services are optional, as customers may stay with data center services that have been offered by Data Cave or add more services from the new owners, Skipper said.
There are no plans to expand the Data Cave building footprint at this time, she said.
The acquisition in Columbus brings Immedion to eight data centers in seven markets around the United States, including its headquarters in Greenville, South Carolina, and centers located in Columbia, Charleston and Rock Hill, South Carolina; Asheville, North Carolina; and several in the Cincinnati area.
May praised Immedion as a great company and fit for Data Cave, who is enhancing the business with a variety of products not available prior to the sale. Having redundancy across the nation — a company could have data available in several centers around the United States — is an advantage the Columbus facility couldn’t do without expansion.
Immedion was founded in 2007 with a goal of bringing enterprise-class data center and managed information technology services available in larger cities to smaller markets, the company said.
Data Cave was established in 2008 in Columbus to serve customers in Indianapolis, Bloomington, Louisville, Evansville and Cincinnati metro areas.
The Data Cave facility features 28 private, independent-data suites with dedicated heating, ventilation and air conditioning, fire suppression and electrical distribution to each suite.
To deliver the highest levels of uptime, Data Cave includes fully redundant HVAC systems, a structure designed to withstand a 200+ mph wind rating (equivalent to an EF5 tornado), and biometric access controls, fenced perimeter gated entrance and dual fed power. The facility also has multiple fiber providers with diverse connectivity paths and a designated business continuity workspace that can accommodate up to 240 people.
Immedion said having the facility in Columbus offers a high level of stability and security, making it an ideal location for disaster recovery.
“Immedion is dedicated to delivering the highest levels of uptimes and infrastructure performance,” said Rob Moser, the company’s president and chief operating officer. “This facility meets our stringent requirements and has a proven eight-year track record of delivering 100 percent uptime.”
The facility is located outside of the flood plain and surrounded by a moat to divert water if flooding every occurred.
Data Cave has a wide variety of customers, including the city of Columbus, which moved its servers to Data Cave in 2013. The city pays about $15,000 a year to have its servers housed at the facility.
May said she and her husband are now focusing on expanding AEI, which does engine testing and develops analytical testing techniques to do that testing. Data Cave is located next to the AEI complex on Columbus’ east side.
May was president of Data Cave and is continuing as president of AEI.
The couple harnessed their desire to innovate with AEI, capitalizing on each other’s strengths to move the company forward, May said in an earlier interview. Her husband David is the innovator and Angie is the logical, process-oriented engineer, she said.
They have been turning company ideas into prototypes and AEI has continued to grow over the years, she said. Its first project was developing an underwater communication system for the U.S. Navy.
As technology has continued to grow in the future, AEI has the opportunity to provide more products and services, she said.
“With Data Cave, it was beyond the time and scope of where I wanted to focus my time and energy,” May said.
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Immedion’s objective is to keep business-critical data and applications available 100 percent of the time, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, the company says.
To accomplish this, the business combines world-class data center facilities and a strategic array of managed services to deliver the highest degree of reliability at a competitive price.
Since 2007, the company has provided customers with fully redundant power, Internet bandwith, cooling and humidity control to secure their IT infrastructure.
Customers use the company’s enterprise-class data centers and Cloud services to minimize critical computer downtime caused by commercial power outages, Internet problems and other system failures.
The company is headquartered in Greenville, South Carolina, with additional data center facilities in Asheville, North Carolina; Columbia, South Carolina; Charleston, South Carolina; Rock Hill, South Carolina; two in Cincinnati, Ohio: and Columbus, Indiana.
For more information: Visit immedion.com or call 864-908-3000.
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