AZIGG - April, 2010: Data Centers in Arizona
(Note:  Click on images below for larger view)

One day after the 7.2 earthquake hit northern Mexico near Yuma, Arizona, a full house of AZIGG’ers gathered in Scottsdale at ASU-SkySong to discuss how the global companies are migrating their data to Phoenix, Arizona – partly because we’re so geologically stable. Oh my!

 

The good news: the earthquake was not felt in Phoenix and there were no reported incidents. Conversely, we happened to be in San Diego on Sunday when the quake hit and it was felt heartily there.  Another strong business advantage for Arizona confirmed: we’re stable!

 

Brad Smidt of GPEC discussed how Arizona has successfully attracted data centers to the state. Work is ongoing, and since we can not offer the up-front incentives that California, Texas and some other states offer, we have many other advantages.

 

We heard from two data center leaders that are headquartered here – Rick Crutchley of Corelink Data Centers and Greg Davit of i/o Data Centers.  They confirmed the advantage and the fact that global customers are migrating their data here.  Joe Ingram described the industry from the IT providers perspective, and Dave Rice explained how cloud computing will ultimately help Arizona gain additional data and companies here.

 

Many thanks to our sponsors: Snell & Wilmer, Advantage Urgent Care of the East Valley, ServerLIFT and SRP Telecom.

 

For pictures of the event, please see the pictures below.  You may also visit www.facebook.com/doug.bruhnke for a complete set of pictures from this and other AZIGG events.

Thanks to Bart Butler, Michael Charap and Julie Vasquez for helping with the event.  Check out the pictures from our group photographer Laird Brown (www.smallbusinessphoto.com).