Richard Chaves and his partners are
investing $1 million to
launch Synergy Data Center and
Services in the historic Baker Tower building, with hopes of eventually bringing 100 high-tech
jobs to Baker City.
Chaves said three Oregon companies, including his own, Chaves Consulting of Baker City, along
with Arikkan Inc. of Salem, are forming Synergy Data Center and Services (Synergy DCS).
Through Synergy DCS, the partners will be
investing about $1
million in Phase I of the project,
which involves installing 42 racks, each with 36 computer servers, and related equipment needed
to get the data center up and running on the third floor of the Baker Tower.
The 10-story structure, built in 1929 at the
corner of Main and
Auburn and known originally as
the Hotel Baker, is the tallest building east of the Cascades.
Phase I includes about $600,000 for the
servers, electrical
wiring, backup generators, raising
the floor, lowering the ceiling and installing air conditioners to keep the servers at or below
60 degrees.
Chaves said the initial investment also
includes $200,000 to
$250,000 for computer equipment
just to monitor the data center, as well as $100,000 to $150,000 in consultant costs and set up
fees for the servers and surveillance system.
Phase I is scheduled to be finished in July.
Initially the data center will employ “a
couple of” workers,
Chaves said.
“A data center in itself doesn’t require a
lot of employees
because we’re basically monitoring other businesses’ equipment,” he said.
The job-creating potential comes from
expanding into other related
services, Chaves said.
One such project, which is not yet finalized,
could result in an
estimated 100 jobs over the next two to three years, he said.
That project involves a state agency that is
looking at setting up
a redundant server system at Synergy DCS that will collect and store everything that is keyed into
the agency’s primary server in Salem. Chaves said that redundancy will ensure that the agency can
function without a glitch or shutdown in the event of a natural disaster, terrorist attack or some
other disaster that strikes the primary servers in the Willamette Valley.
In the next five years Chaves’ group hopes to
invest several
million dollars to expand the data center to 20,000 square feet, and to attract customers ranging
from local, national and international businesses to city, county, state and federal government
agencies, as well as school districts in Oregon and elsewhere.
Chaves said the vision behind Synergy DCS is
to create and gain
recognition as one of the premier
data hosting providers in the nation, while creating family-wage jobs.
Entry into some areas of the data center will
be permitted only to
workers and others with scan ID
badges, and entry to the most secure areas where the servers are located will require palm print
identification, like people might see in a movie or television show, Chaves said.
Chaves said an executive order signed last
fall by Gov. Ted
Kulongoski directing state agencies to
consider locating services and staff in historic buildings around the state when feasible is giving
the Baker Tower a boost in attracting business from state agencies.
“We have heard at the state level that
discussions are taking
place among the agencies about the
governor’s directive, which gives us a better chance of hosting agencies,” Chaves said. “So being in
a historic building is definitely improving our chances of landing a state agency.”
As a location for housing computer servers,
Chaves said Baker City
has a big advantage in cost
savings over metropolitan areas such as Los Angeles or even Portland, including lower labor costs
and, compared to L.A., a cooler climate that limits the need for power-hungry air conditioning.
Currently, Chaves Consulting provides servers
people from all over
Oregon tie into and have all of
their information here, so they can do their work over the Internet.
However, Chaves said that’s different from
what the new data
center will provide through Synergy DCS.
“With the data center, we are going to have
multiple private and
public entities that will have their
servers here, with access from wherever they are, and we will be hosting their info,” Chaves said.
“For some of our customers we will be their
primary hosting
system, and for others we will be a
redundant site, primarily for use when their primary system goes down, it will switch over to our
system and they won’t miss a beat,” Chaves said.
In order to serve small business clients as well as
large
businesses, agencies, schools and
organizations, Chaves said Synergy DCS will make partial rack server space storage available to buy
or lease.