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August 27-September 2, 1999
IRM returns to mainframe concept at AIM’s clandestine control center
By Monica Perin Houston Business Journal
When an electrical transformer blew earlier this year and shut down power at mutual fund company AIM Management Group’s Greenway Plaza headquarters, key employees quickly drove downtown to the firm’s brand new, state-of- the-art data center and carried on business as usual.
The 30,000-square-foot nerve center, which is kept covert for security reasons, was designed and constructed last year by Houston-based IRM International, a consulting firm that specializes in such high-tech facilities.
AIM has transferred the firm‘s database and computer servers to the new facility, which is designed to withstand “anything Houston can throw at it,” including a Category 5 hurricane, says IRM President Michael Colton.
“Information and the technology that delivers it are absolutely vital to our ability to serve our customers,” says Paul Wise, vice president of AIM and director of information technology services. Now the 10th largest mutual fund group in the world, AIM has some $121 billion in assets under management and 6.3 million shareholders. The financial management firm receives more than 30,000 in-bound phone calls a day, and its fund managers and investment traders buy and sell millions of shares of stocks and bonds daily.
“Downtime is not an option,” Wise says. “If we were to lose technology services, it would have a significant impact on our business.”
AIM and IRM began planning the new data center two years ago and was located in an office building designed specifically for data centers. The power system includes dual feeds from Reliant Energy, a huge, uninterruptible power supply and for backup, a diesel generator larger than a 747 jet engine.
“Our operators call the data center ‘The House that Michael Built,”’ says Wise. Without it, the financial firm would already have outgrown the computer capacity at its Greenway Plaza location.
IRM is already constructing a similar facility for another local company, and Colton calls the trend a “full circle” return to the computer environments of the 1960s and 1970s.
“For the last 20 years we have been cycling from the mainframe environment to the client server environment, with mission-critical servers sitting under somebody’s desk exposed to the world,” says Colton.
“We have been working a long time without proper policies and procedures to make sure the system stays up,” he says. “Now we are corning back to recognizing a need for consolidated, highly secure, highly available data centers. We’re getting back to a level of performance enjoyed in the ’70s but with a new generation of equipment.”
Michael Colton. President. IRM International. Inc. can be reached at (713) 975-6044 or mcolton@irminternational.com
