Switch is a company based in Las Vegas, Nevada, that develops and operates the SUPERNAP data center facilities and provides colocation, telecommunications, cloud services, and content ecosystems.
Video Switch (company)
History
Switch was founded in 2000 by Rob Roy, CEO and the organization's principal inventor and chief engineer. In 2002, Roy purchased a former Enron facility in Nevada in an auction only attended by Roy since Enron's "fiber plans were so secretive that few people even knew about the auction", with the facility which Enron invested millions of dollar into selling for only $930,000. The facility was built in a rundown area of Las Vegas near E Sahara, constructed right over the "backbone" of fiber optic cables providing service to technology companies nationwide, which Enron sought to use as a way to sell bandwidth to internet service providers like a commodity. Six years later in 2008, Switch was planning to build its first SUPERNAP facility which would "rival anything being built by the likes of Microsoft and Google" for $350 million, with Roy stating that he could store "four times as much gear as those companies do in his center".
Rob Roy holds 218 patents or patent-pending claims for SUPERNAP designs and engineering that have been Tier IV certified by the Uptime Institute. However, in 2017, the company announced that it would no longer pursue certifications by the Uptime Institute, and instead planned to create a non-profit organization to control and define a new data center standard that uses 30 additional metrics and is called Tier 5 Platinum, and that they have plans to follow the new standards. Switch is a CLEC (Competitive Local Exchange Carrier) that sells all telecommunications services.
As of July 2015, half of the company's 14 top executives are women. Seventy-percent of the current workforce are veterans.
In 2015, the company became the first data center provider in the U.S. to participate in President Barack Obama's American Business Act on Climate Pledge by announcing that they would join the second round of private sector companies participating in this effort. Under this pledge, and following the company's commitment to sustainability, Switch is currently constructing the first of two solar farms, which will provide renewable energy to its data centers. As of January 1, 2016 all Switch data centers are 100% powered by clean and renewable energy. In 2016 Switch joined the WWF/WRI Renewable Buyers' Principles with a public commitment to have their Michigan data centers also 100% renewably powered.
In its 2017 report on the energy footprint of the IT sector, Greenpeace positioned Switch as one of the leaders in clean energy for the company's use of renewable energy in its data centers.
Maps Switch (company)
Data Centers
In 2008, the company opened SUPERNAP 7, a 515,047-square-foot (47,849.4 m2) facility, its seventh data center. In 2017, LAS VEGAS 10 opened adding approximately 350,000 square feet of data center space. The Core Campus located in Las Vegas consists of eleven operating data centers spanning over 2 million square feet. At completion of construction, The Core Campus will measure more than 2.3 million square feet with 12 buildings completed.
Power to the data facilities will be generated through two solar generation projects, Switch Station 1 and Switch Station 2. The Switch Stations will produce 179-megawatts of power and were originally part of a joint construction project through First Solar in partnership with NV Energy. In June 2017, EDF Renewable Energy acquired the two solar projects from First Solar.
Switch has sued NV Energy for $30 million over disagreements about power price, and in 2016 Switch was allowed to switch from NV Energy to its own solar power plants at an "exit fee" of $27 million.
In January, 2015 Switch announced a $4 billion expansion plan to build a new data center campus east of Reno in Storey County. The Citadel Campus at Tahoe Reno Industrial Center (TRIC) is over 1,000 acres and is expected to have more than 7.2 million square feet of data center space at completion. In February 2017, Switch opened its first data center on the campus, TAHOE RENO 1, which will be more than 1.3 million square feet (110,000 m2), have 130 MVA power capacity, and more than 83,000 tons of cooling capability, making it the largest data center campus in the world. This is the first of eight planned data centers to be built at TRIC.
In order to connect its Las Vegas and Tahoe-Reno campus, Switch is building the Switch SUPERLOOP fiber network, which will connect Las Vegas to Reno through 500-miles (800 km) of fiber. The Switch SUPERLOOP will extend directly to include Los Angeles and San Francisco.
Construction has begun on Switch's Pyramid Campus (former Steelcase Pyramid) in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Switch opened The Pyramid Campus in May 2017. At completion, it will reach up to 1.8 million square-feet making it the largest data center campus in the eastern U.S.
SUPERNAP International
In 2014, Switch formed SUPERNAP International in partnership with ACDC Fund and its two limited partners Orascom TMT Investments and Accelero Capital to build data centers based on designs from the Tier IV-rated Switch SUPERNAP U.S. facilities. The two new SUPERNAP International campus projects under construction are located in Siziano, Italy slated to open late 2016 and the Chonburi Province, Thailand campus opening in early 2017.
The SUPERNAP data center campus in Siziano, Italy will be 452,084 square-feet (42,000 m2) and have 40-megawatt power distributed via two 132kV transmission paths.
The $300 million USD (11 billion THB) Thailand SUPERNAP data center facility will have capacity for more than 6,000 data server racks. It will cover an area of nearly 75 rai (12 hectares) and is located 27-kilometers away from an international cable landing station linking national and international telecoms and IT carriers.
Locations
Switch headquarters are in Las Vegas, with data center facilities and Innevation Centers located in northern and southern Nevada. Switch expanded to the eastern United States with its campus located in Grand Rapids, Michigan and recently announced plans to develop a more than 1 million square foot data center campus in Atlanta, Georgia.
The Core Campus - Las Vegas, Nevada
The Citadel Campus - Reno, Nevada
The Pyramid Campus - Grand Rapids, Michigan
Customers
Switch has hundreds of clients, including Fortune 1000 companies. Users include eBay, HP, EMC, Intel, Shutterfly, Machine Zone (Game of War), Amgen, DreamWorks, JP Morgan Chase, Sony, Boeing and Fox Broadcasting, among others. According to The Register, "organizations turn to Switch for black-ops projects, spam filtering of the most serious proportions, utility computing projects, data warehouses at casinos, modeling, online games and old-fashioned e-commerce".
Switch developed an over $5 trillion purchasing cooperative to allow customers to collectively purchase telecommunications and other services across all of its campuses.
Certifications and awards
Switch SUPERNAP 8 data center has received Tier IV Gold Operational Sustainability Certificate from the Uptime Institute, a Tier IV Constructed Facility Certificate and Tier IV Design Certificate. In addition, Switch SUPERNAP 9 has received a Tier IV Gold Operational Sustainability Certificate, a Tier IV Design Certificate and a Tier IV Constructed Facility Certificate.
Supercomputers
In 2014, Switch announced collaboration with Intel and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas to give university researchers access to a powerful supercomputer. iSupercomputer Cherry Creek will be housed on Switch's campus, with researchers accessing the computer through the SUPERNAP facilities' telecommunications network to work in fields that include genetics and medicine.
In 2017, Switch donated $3.4 million in data center services to the University of Nevada, Reno for a new supercomputer, called Pronghorn. The supercomputer will be housed in the TAHOE RENO 1 data center, and it is expected that the initial hardware installation will be completed in September 2017. The university plans to use the supercomputer for research computing tasks across several of its disciplines.
Innevation Center
Innevation Center Las Vegas
Switch has designed a 65,000 square foot Innevation Center in Las Vegas, Nevada.
The Las Vegas Innevation Center is a collaborative work space that allows members of the community, non-profits and other organizations to work and host events.
Innevation Center Reno
Switch partnered with the University of Nevada, Reno to develop the northern Nevada-based Innevation Center in a facility in downtown Reno, Nevada which opened in September 2015. The northern Nevada Innevation Center is a collaborative center for students, entrepreneurs, businesses, investors and non-profits. The 25,000 square-foot building was purchased from City of Reno. Switch contributed $500,000 for the interior build-out, and the center was funded from a $3 million grant from the Governor's Office of Economic Development (GOED).
The Innevation Center in Reno is home to the Nevada Advanced Autonomous Systems Innovation Center (NAASIC). Funded by a grant from Governor's Office of Economic Development, the center hosts programs to commercialize stationary robotic and advanced manufacturing systems, unmanned aerial vehicles, driverless cars, and underwater robots.
References
Relevant Patents
- U.S. Patent-Integrated wiring system and thermal shield support apparatus for a data center Patent number 8,072,780 December 6, 2011
- U.S. Patent-Server system with heat dissipation device Patent number 8,300,402 October 30, 2012
- U.S. Patent-Data center air handling unit Patent number 8,469,782 June 25, 2013
- U.S. Patent-Electronic equipment data center or co-location facility designs and methods of making and using the same Patent number 8,523,643 September 3, 2013
- U.S. Patent-Data center facility design configuration Patent number 9,198,331 November 24, 2015
External links
- Official website
- A Look Inside the Vegas SuperNAP, Data Center Knowledge
Source of article : Wikipedia
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