Hitting the Road with Eric Petersen: HiMSS and OrHiMA Exhibit Recap

Posted on May 23, 2012 by

Many companies in Oregon’s I-5 corridor are beginning to recognize that the BendBroadband Vault is the first in-state option for organizations seeking geo-distant colocation and disaster recovery services.

Eric Petersen, Data Center Services Sales Manager at the Vault attended two events over the past month, where he helped grow awareness of the Vault’s services and close proximity, yet safe distance, from the Northwest’s metropolitan areas.

On April 30th, Petersen was in Salem at the Annual Spring Conference for the Health Information and Management Systems Society.  Approximately 200 healthcare professionals attended the event from organizations like Providence, PeaceHealth, Legacy, OCHIN and St. Charles Health Systems.

Security is of upmost importance to healthcare organizations, and many attendees met with Petersen to discuss topics relevant to Health Information Exchange and Coordinated Care and Collaboration.

One healthcare plan administrator from Salem spoke with Petersen about his desire for a disaster recovery site and had not considered an in-state option until he learned of the Vault.

Alternatively, several hospital organizations revealed backup strategies that include in-region backup and hosting services, but did not include an out of region component. This is where the team at the BendBroadband Vault can add value and make a good backup strategy even better.

A few weeks after the HiMSS Conference, May 17-18, the Vault exhibited at the Oregon chapter of the American Health Information Management Association (OrHIMA) annual convention in Portland.

Petersen reports that he met healthcare professionals from around the region, who travelled from places like Great Falls, Montana and  Astoria, Oregon.

Petersen has several other exhibits planned next month. He will be at the Interface 2012 Conference near Medford, Oregon June 8, and then traveling up to Seattle, Washington on June 18 for the VMware User Group Conference.

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Governor Kitzhaber and Oregon’s First Lady Tour the Vault

Posted on May 17, 2012 by

We were honored to give Governor Kitzhaber and First Lady Cylvia Hayes a Vault tour today. They learned a little bit about our company history, our investment in green technology and our utilization of local resources in the construction of the facility.

Kitzhaber and Hayes were especially impressed by the free cooling passive heat exchange system. BendBroadband CEO Amy Tykeson and Director of Business Sales Sean Handley lead the tour.

The Governor was wearing his trademark cowboy boots, jeans and a sportcoat! Below are a few photos from the tour.

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BendBroadband Vault Received Honorable Mention in Uptime Institute’s 2012 Green Enterprise IT Awards Competition

Posted on May 15, 2012 by

Left to right: Pitt Turner, Executive Director, Uptime Institute; John Ford, VP of Sabey Data Centers (Sponsors of the GEIT awards); John Sabey, CEO of Sabey Data Centers; Steve Rudinsky, BendBroadband Vault; Kenneth Brill, Founder of Uptime Institute and creator of the Tier system

Yesterday BendBroadband Vault accepted an Honorable Mention in the prestigious 2012 Green Enterprise IT (GEIT) Awards, presented by the Uptime Institute. The GEIT Awards showcase organizations that are pioneering energy-efficiency improvements in their IT and data center operations.

The Vault was recognized in the Facility Design Implementation category for its state-of-the-art, energy efficient design. Several notable GEIT winners include Facebook, Verizon Wireless, eBay and Dell among others.

Steve Rudinsky from BendBroadband Vault was in Santa Clara, California at the seventh annual Uptime Institute Symposium, to accept the award, and presented a brief case study about the Vault’s green initiatives.

His presentation highlighted BendBroadband’s 30,000-square-foot colocation data center and a few features of its low-carbon design: an onsite 152kW Solar Generation plant,  free cooling passive heat exchange system that cools with outside air 75% of the time, and 100% Blue Sky renewable energy. The Vault is LEED Gold certified.

A principal objective of the GEIT Awards is to educate the data center and IT industries in effective ways to reduce energy and resource consumption by highlighting innovation and best practices. The Awards are open to applicants in all countries, and entries are thoroughly reviewed by an international committee of independent judges.


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Compliance is Customary at the Vault

Posted on April 30, 2012 by

For IT professionals in the medical or financial sectors, staying compliant with government regulations such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act or meeting the mark for the Standards for Attestation Engagements No. 16, commonly referred to as HIPAA and SSAE 16 respectively, can be expensive and overwhelming. That’s why several businesses have selected the BendBroadband Vault for their data storage requirements.

St. Charles Health System in Oregon as well as a regional bank and an international telecommunications company colocate or store their primary data at the Vault and take advantage of the facility’s proven compliancy and certifications.

Because the Vault is Tier III certified, HIPAA compliant and SSAE 16 audited, clients can store their data without the worry of first achieving, and then enforcing the stringent and often impractical data storage policies and procedures at their business locations.

While anyone who’s visited a doctor recently is familiar with HIPAA policies that protect the privacy of medical patients, many are not as familiar with the new SSAE 16 assurance audit for service providers which last year replaced Statement on Auditing Standards No. 70 as the leading compliance initiative for service organizations.

The Vault passed the rigorous SSAE 16 audit after a detailed review of processes, policies, procedures and operational activities and validated optimal performance standards regarding security, availability and operational integrity.

As a result of passing the rigorous SSAE 16 audit while demonstrating compliance to HIPAA security standards, customers of the Vault can rest assured that they are meeting data security standards and that their crucial data is housed in one of most the secure data centers on Earth.

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The Great Data Migration: Why Facebook, Apple and the Vault Data Centers Call Central Oregon Home

Posted on April 25, 2012 by

Many people are drawn to Central Oregon by the natural beauty and recreation opportunities such as rock climbing at Smith Rock National Park, snow sports on Mt. Bachelor or a summertime float on the Deschutes River through the thriving city of Bend. But Central Oregon is attracting businesses as well and becoming known as an ideal location for storing data.

In February, Apple confirmed the purchase of a 160-acre lot in Prineville, the same small Central Oregon town where Facebook built a 300,000 square foot data center last year and also plans to build another next door.

Industry sources have confirmed rumors that yet another data center project, codenamed “Jasper” is in the works.  The abundance of affordable energy and generous tax incentives means data centers in Central Oregon are here to stay.

These single-tenant, mega-data centers are intended for proprietary purposes meaning other companies cannot colocate in them. On the other hand, the BendBroadband Vault data center in Bend offers a multi-tenant colocation service so that the aspiring Apples and Facebooks of tomorrow have an affordable data storage resource today.

Celebrating its first anniversary this month, the Vault is the only Tier III-certified data center in the Western United States, which means it has triple redundancy (or in geek speak, is concurrently maintainable) and is designed to withstand any power, cooling or connectivity outages.

Both the Vault and Facebook’s data center are LEED Gold Certified, and utilize state-of-the-art energy efficiency and green design – which will help keep Central Oregon beautiful.

Companies on the quest for data center services may consider Central Oregon because of its picturesque setting and the ability to mix business and pleasure in this outdoor recreation hotspot, but that isn’t the only reason.

Here are the top three reasons companies should consider Central Oregon, and particularly the Vault when selecting a secure site for their data:

1) Climate: The Vault is situated in Oregon’s high desert. The elevation and chilly nighttime temperatures provide an ideal climate for the advanced KyotoCooling systems to use outside air 75% of the time.

2) Affordable Energy: Central Oregon has no shortage of affordable power, with the main transmission line for the Bonneville Power Administration running through the region carrying hydro and wind energy from the Columbia River to California; this reduces the cost of electricity and ultimately enables the Vault to pass on the savings to its clients.

3) Low-risk of natural disasters: News of damage from hurricanes, tornadoes and earthquakes spreads quickly, and if companies in susceptible areas aren’t colocating their data in a place such as Central Oregon, they risk losing it all. Central Oregon is seldom threatened by extreme weather and according to the Department of Geology and Mineral Industries, has a much lower risk of seismic activity than most West Coast cities.

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Uptime Institute Names Winners of 2012 Green Enterprise IT Awards

Posted on April 17, 2012 by

The following article was published by Mission Critical Magazine on April 17, 2012:

Uptime Institute, a division of The 451 Group, has announced the winners of the 2012 Green Enterprise IT Awards, which recognize pioneering advancements for significantly improved energy productivity in IT and data center operations. The recipients will be honored at Uptime Institute Symposium in Santa Clara, California, on May 14-17, 2012, where they will share experiences and insights with industry peers through case-study presentations. Uptime Institute Symposium is the most influential all-stakeholder thought-leadership conference serving the global data center industry.
The 2012 GEIT Awards winners are:

• Audacious Idea: Facebook

• Facility Design Implementation: Verizon Wireless

• Facility Design Innovation: Bell Canada and Urbacon Architecture

• Facility Product Deployment: NTT Communications and Vigilent

• Facility Retrofit: National Snow and Ice Data Center and The RMH Group

• IT Product Deployment: XtremIO and Confidential Client

• IT Retrofit: HP Enterprise Group, India Research and Development Labs, Bangalore

• Modular Data Center Product Deployment: eBay and Dell

“This year over 100 organizations from 23 countries participated in the 2012 GEIT Awards from companies across the globe, presenting some of the most impressive applications our judges have seen to date,” said Matt Stansberry, program director of Uptime Institute Symposium and director of content and publications for Uptime Institute. “The Uptime Institute GEIT Awards program showcases the energy efficiency efforts of the most innovative data center operators and vendors, and contributes to the shared knowledge and best practices of our industry.”

Uptime Institute also announced the following 2012 GEIT Awards Finalists: Yahoo! (Facility Design Implementation); Sberbank Mega Datacenter and Mercury Engineering Russia (Facility Design Innovation); Texas Advanced Computing Center and Green Revolution Cooling (Facility Product Deployment); the University of Leicester and Keysource (Facility Retrofit); Cisco Systems and Confidential Client (IT Product Deployment); EMC Corporation and Symmes Maini & McKee Associates (IT Retrofit); and Ark Continuity, Red Engineering Design, and BladeRoom Group (Modular Data Center Product Deployment).

In addition, the following organizations received an Honorable Mention in the 2012 GEIT Awards competition: BendBroadband Vault Multi-Tenant Data Center (Facility Design Implementation); Digital Realty (Facility Design Innovation); IceCOLD and Confidential Client (Facility Product Deployment); California Technology Agency, Office of Technology Services, and California Data Center Design Group (Facility Retrofit); and the University of Colorado, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, Data Centers Delivered, and Critical Facilities Technology (Modular Data Center Product Deployment).

The 2012 GEIT Awards are being sponsored by Sabey Data Centers.  Entries were thoroughly reviewed by an international committee of independent judges.

The theme of the 2012 Uptime Institute Symposium is Digital Infrastructure Convergence™, a call-to-action for IT and facilities management professionals to increase their level of strategic communication and cooperation.  Symposium will feature over 120 presentations and sessions across 4 days led by industry experts and analysts from Uptime Institute and 451 Research with participation from the most cutting-edge enterprises and organizations in the global data center marketplace. The GEIT Award honorees’ case-study presentations are scheduled throughoutSymposium. To see the complete Symposium program, click here.

For the first time, this year’s Symposium will feature a unique Modular Data Center Campus within the Santa Clara Convention Center. Symposium Delegates and Exposition-registered visitors will have an unprecedented opportunity to actually walk through the leading modular data center designs and make side-by-side comparisons, enabling a better understanding of their respective pros and cons for more effective decision-making.

To attend Uptime Institute Symposium 2012: Digital Infrastructure Convergence you may registerhere. Free Expo-only passes are also available for May 14 and 15 which include access to the Exhibition Hall and Modular Data Center Campus. On Monday, May 14, Expo-Only pass-holders may also attend select presentations, the GEIT Awards ceremony, and an evening networking event.  Registration is required for Expo-Only attendance and passes are available on a first come, first served basis by clicking here.

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Portland Interface 2012 trade show

Posted on March 13, 2012 by

The BendBroadband Vault sales and marketing teams are in Portland today exhibiting at the Portland Interface 2012 trade show.  The Interface 2012 shows are in most major cities across the country, and The Vault is attending four events this year, including Boise, Seattle and Southern Oregon, as well as today’s event in Portland.  The Portland Interface event attracted over 400 IT managers, directors and executives from companies across Oregon and South West Washington.  The industries represented here are very diverse, from manufacturing, distribution and transportation, electronics manufacturers, and software companies.  Of particular interest to The Vault target markets are the many Healthcare related companies, as well as those from the Financial industry, and the many State and Local governmental agencies.

In attendance from the Vault marketing and sales team are:  Steve Rudinsky, Marketing Manager; Renata Thommen, Business Services Sales Support Manager; and Eric Petersen, Vault Data Center Services Sales Manager based out of Portland.

The attendance is quite high, and many people are interested in talking about the colocation data center services that The Vault provides, and the region in general.

A couple of IT managers from a state agency came by to discuss the recent announcement that Facebook was expanding their data center operations in Central Oregon, and that Apple recently purchased land to build their own data center there as well.  The advantages around a mild climate to cool their computer gear, the distance away from natural disasters such as earthquakes, floods and tornadoes and the proximity to transportation choices were all mentioned as reasons to initiate discussions with The Vault to locate their IT equipment there.

Eric had an interesting discussion with some executives from a healthcare company who were interested in the anchor tenant at the Vault, St Charles Healthcare Systems.  The high levels of security and the massive reliability built into the Vault are key features of interest to all healthcare organizations.

Renata, at her first Vault trade show, noticed the vast number of potential relationships we could build with many companies, while helping to meet their IT needs. She also met with a systems integrator who has many clients who could use our colocation services and wants to schedule a Vault Tour the next time they are in the Central Oregon area.

Steve met with a different systems and storage infrastructure services provider who has many Portland area clients who have need of disaster recovery solutions away from the Portland region.  He wants to schedule a golf outing and Vault tour later in the springtime.

This show helped develop new contacts and build relationships whereby we get the word out about The Vault colocation services.

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