Level 3 Deploys New Data Center In Omaha

Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) said today that it is opening a new enterprise-grade data center facility in Omaha, which in many ways is the Colorado-based company’s home away from home. The new ‘Premier Elite’ data center will be targeted at meeting the growing needs of the enterprise sector, which is rapidly becoming the company’s growth driver.

Level 3 has long had a large data center footprint, a category which includes everything from several dozen carrier neutral facilities, down to all the huts along its fiber network. But while they have acquired along with their fiber M&A and expanded a few organically, it has been quite some time since I have seen the company actually invest capex in building out a new facility. This, as much as anything else, suggests to me that the company is becoming increasingly confident about the cash flows that it ought to be generating by next year this time.

Of course the location of this new buildout is no coincidence. Level 3 was born out of Omaha-based Kiewit Corporation back in the bubble, and still has Omaha’s Walter Scott as chairman of the board. And Level 3’s new facility will be within the Scott Data Center facility, which is built on the Scott Technology Center, which was established by the Suzanne & Walter Scott Foundation back in 2002.

But with this facility opening on friendly turf in the center of the continent, one wonders if they have plans for similar enterprise-oriented facilities on either coast to go with it and perhaps some bigger cloud-related plans too.

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Categories: Datacenter · Internet Backbones