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Week of September 8-14, 2000
High-tech firms require specially equipped facilities
By George Carr
As the Internet and other information technologies become increasingly pervasive, companies operating these systems need to have their computer and network systems highly available.
The global economy demands that systems be up and functioning 24 hours a day, seven days a week. For system operators, this translates into a figure of “five nines,” or 99.999 percent availability. A system must be down or offline for only five minutes or less per year to achieve that level of service.
Corporate network systems are forced to perform at near perfection or risk serious injury to their business. They must utilize facilities that present little or no added risk to their up-time objectives while providing them great flexibility to reconfigure their systems so that they can also meet critical time-to-market needs.
This has led to the development of facilities specifically designed to provide the infrastructure for high-tech companies to meet mission critical, high availability operational needs.
An example is the Westwood Technology Center, which, for the past year, has been under redevelopment from the defunct Westwood Mall.
The mall structure and the site itself offer important attributes for such operations, and substantial elements are being added to address the entire spectrum of needs for the targeted high-tech tenants.
• Power and parking. High-tech computing and communications operations require large amounts of power to support new and emerging technologies. The site’s large parking lot can also be used for the placement of generators and fuel to protect against the impact of electrical utility interruptions. To further enhance the reliability of critical electrical power. Reliant Energy has committed to providing the site with service from multiple circuits. Also, automatic throw-over switches will be installed, reducing the time needed to transfer services from the primary electrical feed to the secondary feed to just a few seconds.
• High-load floor capacity. High-tech centers need live floor load capacity of 150 to 200 pounds per square foot. High-rise facilities typically require structural upgrades to meet the tenant needs, but the entire first floor of WTC, approximately 250,000 square feet, meets the need without any modifications. The structure can also be reinforced to provide similar load capacity on the second floor, depending on specific tenant needs.
• Roof surface. The large floor plates also result in a very large roof surface. This is important to high-tech tenants for locating both HVAC equipment and communication towers. With a two-story height, tenants will have the option of using cost-effective split air conditioning systems to dissipate the enormous quantities of heat generated by dense electronic components.
• High ceilings. Both floors also have high ceiling clearances, a must for raised-floor environments.
• Fiber optics. High-tech operations demand greater communications capacity and diversity. The WTC is located in close proximity to numerous fiber-optic carrier pathways, a factor that is important to tenants that need carrier pathways neutrality and protection against interruptions based on a single carrier’s failure.
• Routing. Physical diversity is also important on the site itself. To create a state-of-the-art communications environment, multiple entrance points are being developed to eliminate any single point of failure. This configuration is crucial in preventing the infamous backhoe scenario and enabling the implementation of “self- healing” networks. Within the building itself, high capacity conduit has been installed to ensure that carrier services can be routed to any part of the building from all entrance points. This design supports the capacity, flexibility and rapid response requirements of the envisioned tenants.
As technology becomes a bigger and bigger facet of society, facilities developers are challenged to ensure that the ever-growing dependency is met by ever-increasing reliability. The goal is to provide an environment that is conducive to high-tech companies achieving such high reliability. And in the case of WTC there’s a side benefit: A defunct mall is being transformed into a highly productive work place.
George Carr is a consultant with IRM International Inc., specializing in technology for competitive infrastructure. IRM International’s Jim Francis and Michael Colton contributed to this commentary. IRM and Provident Realty are redeveloping the defunct Westwood Mall into the Westwood Technology Center.
