Orange & Rockland Utilities aims a DART at data centers for new business in 2011

For Orange & Rockland Utilities, 2010 is shaping up as the year of the data center.

The term may sound a little technical, but the concept is simple. A data center is a place where banks of computers run to back up important data for business to ensure they're safe from accident and disaster.

Running lots of computers takes lots of electric power, and that's something O&R knows about.

O&R has always worked hard to bring new business into its service area, but the company has started a new program to focus on attracting and keeping data center operators.

The Datacenter Action Response Team (DART) was created in late October to provide a new and more focused way for the company to target this significant new growth area.

Struck heads the team, which includes four specialists:  a customer-service expert to walk the businesses through every step of the move, an energy efficiency specialist to help the customer get the best rate and most effective and dependable power source, a community relations expert to help deal with public officials and an engineer to handle the technical issues.

"This is in response to demand," said Rick Struck, O&R's director of economic development.

More and more companies started looking at O&R territory for data center sites after O&R's success with the New York Stock Exchange's center, a 400,000-square-foot center that opened in Mahwah, N.J., in August.

"Companies looking for data center locations figure if the NYSE is satisfied, then they'll take a look at the area, too," Struck said.

Using such an integrated, interdisciplinary team is a new approach for O&R.  DART is in effect "a SWAT team" aimed at making O&R's efforts more effective, Struck said.

"This is graduation to the big time," Struck said.

Struck credits O&R President and CEO Bill Longhi with the idea that became DART after the company's success with the NYSE project.

DART aims to bring data centers to spots throughout the company's service area.

"Most data center operators want to be within 20 to 50 miles of Manhattan," said Struck.

Since a large part of O&R's service area — which covers all of Rockland County, plus parts of Orange and Sullivan counties in New York, Pike County, Pa. and Bergen County, N.J. — is in that zone, this seemed to be a sure thing.

It's a way to bring new businesses into the area, creating jobs and a demand for O&R's services without the downside of some other industries. Data centers don't have smokestacks, so there's no major pollution issue. And because they're occupied by rows of computers rather than rows of desks, data centers don't generate a lot of automotive or truck traffic to tie up local arteries and frustrate neighbors.

"Data centers are the ideal new business for our communities," said Struck. "These companies are the classic clean, desirable ratable, and we want to do everything we can to make sure they locate here. These are the kind of business that we believe will prove highly acceptable to local communities."

Struck said they do not have a formal target in terms of how much business DART hopes to create for the company, but he said there are about a dozen projects in the works. Each of those projects has the potential to bring jobs to the area as well.

"It is not the most job-intensive industry," said Struck, estimating that a 100,000 square-foot data center operation probably creates 30 positions. "But they are well-paying, highly-skilled jobs."

While many data centers are built for specific corporations — such as the NYSE and Verizon Wireless — there's another branch of the industry, called colocation, that provides a sort of mini-storage center for backup data from numerous corporate clients, such as Blue Hill Data Services right next door to O&R's offices in Pearl River.

DART spent much of its early days identifying sites throughout its territory — especially in Rockland County — that would be ideal for data centers.

"Every town in Rockland has a potential site," Struck explained.

DART's primary focus is on figuring out where O&R has power available at the level and quality that data center operators need. Using the results of the survey of resources in the area, DART is "trying to steer people to the right places," Struck said.

"The common thread for all these customers is they need dependable power," said Struck, noting with pride that O&R's reliability rating is, "99-point-9-something percent."

O&R doesn't operate in a vacuum in attempting to attract data-center business. Data center operators — who primarily serve financial and health-care companies — need more than reliable power. They need high-quality communications networks, so DART has to have a handle on where the fiber optic networks are, too.

They also need help finding appropriate existing space or developable land, assistance in navigating new-construction difficulties, local government regulations and obtaining tax incentives.

That's where DART's interdisciplinary approach really hits its stride, offering a prospective new business assistance every step of the way — through ribbon cutting and even afterwards.