Infotech Lead America: Online Tech, a provider of data center hosting, is planning to add four more data centers to the company’s portfolio over the next 24 months.
News-Press & Gazette Company has invested $20 million in Online Tech to help it expand into new markets across the Midwest.
The additional investment enables Online Tech to expand its footprint into additional secondary markets across the Midwest and additional vertical markets that require both the high level of compliance and excellent customer service.
With experience in traditional media across a number of secondary markets, NPG saw the emerging opportunity centered on the data center business, one of the fastest-growing segments of the economy today.
“Online Tech has built the leading data center operating company in Michigan. This investment provides us the capital we need to expand our data center business into additional markets across the Midwest,” said Online Tech CEO Yan Ness.
Online Tech focuses on two key areas: Mid-sized businesses in secondary data center markets and compliance-focused vertical markets.
According to Rick Kurtzbein at 451 Research, many secondary markets are underserved as opposed to the 6 top North American data center markets (New York, Northern VA, Chicago, Dallas, LA & Silicon Valley/San Francisco), where most of the data center investment has gone in the past few years.
To date, Online Tech services the secondary market in Michigan with over 60,000 square feet of data center space between three data centers located in Ann Arbor and Flint, with the bulk of its local business from mid-sized businesses with revenue ranging from $20 million to $1 billion.
Online Tech’s cloud hosting solutions primarily serve the financial, health care, health IT, retail and e-commerce markets. The company is one of the first to deliver cloud computing solutions that have been independently audited for both HIPAA and PCI compliance providing a key service for the multi-compliance market.
News-Press & Gazette has presence in print and broadcast media business across the U.S., owning and operating 40 broadcast television stations and 14 publications. With the expansion of traditional media into the digital realm, NPG invested more than $2 million dollars building two data centers in St Joseph, Mo. in 2012.
