Wikipedia defines site selection as dealing with facility locations for business and government entities; it introduces the idea of measuring how a project’s needs compare to the merits of different locations.
More specifically, many industry experts have chimed in on the topic regarding data center site selection.
While most data centers are big customers of and fans of Cisco, the computer networking giant may not be top of mind for selecting the perfect site for your next data center. However, Cisco has published a really informative article on its own data center site selection process that’s worth referencing.
And if Cisco isn’t exactly top of mind for advice on picking the perfect site for a data center, Intel may be an even less obvious source.
Yet Intel has documented and shared a very detailed account of how it approaches site selection in Selecting a Data Center Site: Intel’s Approach.
In a video about data center real estate for the New York Metro area, Randy Ortiz, Internap’s VP of Data Center Design and Engineering, explains how it navigated the site selection process for its Secaucus, New Jersey data center.
Ortiz described how Internap “partners with trusted advisors or brokers who will help us identify locations, as well as buildings, that will meet our basis of design.”
In the same segment, Sean Brady, the Senior Director and Broker from Cushman & Wakefield who worked with Internap on this data center site selection added, “Through a process of elimination, we ultimately decided on Northern New Jersey. And then, within that area, we selected Secaucus. And we actually located a building that was outside the 500-year floodplain, which is the highest a property can be in this area.”
In an article a little while back in Site Selection Magazine on Data Centers: Site Selection 101, Ronald Bowman and Terence Deneny of Structure Tone Mission Critical explain how choosing the right site (“strategic siting”) is critical for controlling a data center lifespan and total cost of ownership.
The two go on to introduce eight evaluation factors, including climate, construction costs, the environment, fiber connectivity, labor, power, taxes, and transportation.
As part of its Data Center Design and Infrastructure Guide, TechTarget helps those looking to build a new data center with a chapter on site selection.
To manage your expectations, the guide seems more like a collection of curated articles dating back a few years.
The beauty of content like this is that it has a long shelf life. While most of the resources discussed here so far are anywhere from a few months to a few years old, TechTarget is showing how even articles from decades ago about data center site selection still have merit, in theory.
That said, if you want more real-time information, where you can also interact more easily with the authors and publishers of the site selection resources, you may want to head to X (Twitter).
Whether you do a simple X (Twitter) search or use a social media tool like Hootsuite or HubSpot Social Inbox, definitely monitor these two hashtags when used together: #DataCenter #SiteSelection
Area Development (AD) Online, part of Halcyon Business Publications, has an entire section of its website dedicated to site selection. The Area Development (AD) X (Twitter) profile definitely, from time to time, covers the intersection of the #SiteSelection and #DataCenter Twitterverse.
Doing quite a remarkable job of branding his own commercial real estate expertise and thought leadership on social media, Gregg Wassmansdorf’s Corporate Real Estate (CRE) Advisor X (Twitter) profile is chocked full of tips, advice, and resources on location-specific incentives, location strategy, and site selection.
As a managing principal of Cresa MCS, Jason Shepard is not only one of the nation’s most sought-after experts on data center real estate, Jason Shepard’s Twitter profile is one of the few and far between dedicating scarce characters of his X (Twitter) bio to include hashtags like #DataCenter | #Colocation | #SiteSelection.
As a 40+-year-old corporate site selection advisory firm, the Boyd Co., Inc. X (Twitter) profile occasionally shares insight on selecting the best sites for data centers.
While he writes about a broad range of topics in the data center ecosystem, Rich Miller of Data Center Frontier is definitely worth following to keep tabs on data center location issues.
Even though most know Schneider Electric as a power solutions-centric company, its Schneider Electric Data Center Solutions X (Twitter) profile overlaps with site selection issues.
As a niche B2B publisher specializing in a few verticals, including corporate site selection, follow the Trade & Industry Development Magazine X (Twitter) profile to keep up with site selection news of interest to data center planners.
As a principal analyst at AltaTerra Research, focusing on the intersection of IT, energy usage, smart grids, cloud, mobile, and data centers, Zen Kishimoto’s Twitter profile is definitely worth following for a more broad-based perspective on data center industry changes impacting site selection.
Also, see:So besides these five industry experts who have defined site selection for data centers and nine Twitter resources – eight profiles and a set of hashtags, who do you follow to stay on top of site selection trends in the data center ecosystem? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.