Momentum for 365 Main

As we've noted here many times, the data center downturn has created opportunity as well as ruin. An example of a provider making the best of that opportunity is San Francisco's 365 Main: The Main Exchange, which acquired a first-class facility center for a song and has become a destination for Bay Area companies seeking to switch hosts. Last week it gained a high-profile new client in Raiders.com, the web site for the Oakland Raiders, which shifted from Cable & Wireless.

"The Raiders organization needed to be in a more stable data center space with a team working to provide us best of class service," said Tom Blanda, VP of Finance and Technology for the Raiders, who have captured the AFC Western Division title the past three years.

365 Main is owned and operated by a partnership including real estate investment company Rockwood Capital, San Francisco developer Union Property Capital and 365 Inc., the team that designed and operates the facility, which was bought from AboveNet after MFN filed for Chapter 11. The data center was completed in 2001 after a $130 million dollar investment by MFN/AboveNet, including a $30 million dollar seismic retrofit that utilizes a state-of-the-art base isolation system.

"This building is designed to survive earthquakes, power outages, and other disasters," said Jean Paul Balajadia, Vice President of The Main Exchange. "If the East Coast outage had happened in San Francisco, our technicians wouldn't have noticed so much as a light blinking on site. Our on site capabilities and multiple redundancies guarantee that our customers' data and Internet traffic can survive almost any challenge."

365 Main acquired several new customers following August outages at two other Bay Area facilities. Among them was AT-LINK America Inc., the US unit of a large Japanese provider of dedicated servers.

"We recently chose to host our disaster recovery fail over servers at 365 Main because of its massive redundancy systems and its overwhelming power backup system," said Michael T. Schoback, the Director of Operations of AT-LINK America, who said the new facility will "guarantee me the peace of mind that whether a problem is caused by a faulty substation, overloads on the California grid, an earthquake, or even an East Coast-style blackout, my business will continue to hum."