With the acquisition of a 76,000-square-foot, 3.6 MW data center in Chaska, Minnesota, Uptime Tier III Design Certified, LightEdge, a cloud and colocation provider with data centers located across the U.S., has entered the Minneapolis market. LightEdge will make a significant investment to deploy its enterprise LightEdge Cloud, its fully redundant network, cloud on-ramps, and managed services to local businesses.
“We are excited to invest in this rapidly growing region, and deliver our best-in-class IT solutions to a new state,” said Jim Masterson, CEO at LightEdge.“We are excited to enter the Minneapolis market, invest in this rapidly growing region, and deliver our best-in-class IT solutions to a new state,” said Jim Masterson, CEO at LightEdge. “We are dedicated to building and supporting tailored cloud solutions delivered from in-market data centers that meet the rigorous demands of enterprise-grade operations and empower local companies with seamless connectivity and the robust infrastructure needed to thrive in today's digital landscape.” Financial terms of this data center acquisition were not disclosed.
Participating in Minnesota’s Data Center Tax Incentive program, which may save up to 40% on total occupancy expenses, the Minneapolis data center benefits from significant cost savings. One of the client's attractions is that there is no sales tax on any IT equipment, data center infrastructure, computer software and license, power utilized in the facility, and personal property tax.
The data center, a highly secured building built to resist winds of up to 185 miles per hour, provides two utility supplies from two substations and disaster recovery office space supported by 2N or N+1 Tier 3 concurrent maintainable configurations. Situated about 25 miles from Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport, the facility has three private data center suites and 30,000 square feet of data hall space.
50+ KW Racks
ISO 27001, PCI DSS, SOC (1, Types 1 & 2, Type 2), and LEED Silver certifications are all held by the site. To serve highly regulated industries including banking, insurance, and healthcare, LightEdge will swiftly increase its certifications at the facility. These will include HIPAA, HITRUST, ISO 20000, ISO 22301, NIST, ITAR, and CJIS certifications.
Based in the United States, LightEdge was established in 1996 and now manages 12 purpose-built data centers. GI Partners purchased a majority position in LightEdge in 2021 with the intention of bolstering and expediting the company's expansion. LightEdge has now tripled its network capacity, established five more data centers, improved its cloud offering, and increased its network capacity tenfold.
The Minneapolis data center can easily accommodate AI workloads with 50+ KW racks and high-density installations, and it has capacity available right now. As the team grows operations, LightEdge plans to recruit more sales and support personnel in the Minneapolis region.
