Yesterday I toured a group of college interns through our downtown data center. I talked about how Lifeline Data Centers clients come from all types of industry: software, manufacturing, health care, retail, IT services, and professional services. I talked about reliable data center power and cooling, and how Lifeline’s high-tech landlord approach suits smart IT organizations who want to solve facilities problems with a guaranteed service level of 99.995% uptime.

Many had never seen a wholesale colocation facility, much less a data center. Many were surprised that cloud computing always employs hardware and data centers somewhere, whether it be in multiple data centers support by a virtualized infrastructure, or just company owned equipment sitting in an outsourced data center like Lifeline. Some were surprised that cloud computing providers form the majority of Lifeline’s tenants.

One comment stood out. “I didn’t know places like this existed.” He didn’t realize that cloud computing always employs hardware and data centers.

I spoke to the to the group leader today, and he summed up this misunderstanding of cloud computing “Clouds are in the sky, and connected wirelessly!”

Alex Carroll

Alex Carroll

Managing Member at Lifeline Data Centers
Alex, co-owner, is responsible for all real estate, construction and mission critical facilities: hardened buildings, power systems, cooling systems, fire suppression, and environmentals. Alex also manages relationships with the telecommunications providers and has an extensive background in IT infrastructure support, database administration and software design and development. Alex architected Lifeline’s proprietary GRCA system and is hands-on every day in the data center.