Behind the scenes at ISG’s Wichita data center

Emily Behlmann

Digital Editor- Wichita Business Journal

I got a chance to tour ISG Technology’s Wichita data center as the company plans to expand some technology it was piloting there for using less energy to keep machines cool.
The 900-square-foot facility, built in 2012, is one of three ISG data centers. A similiar-sized underground facility is in Columbia, Mo., in an area mined out of Baltimore limestone, and a much larger center — more than 16,000 square feet — is in Topeka.
Curtis Mead, who leads sales for ISG’s data center services segment, says many ISG customers turn to one of the data centers for disaster recovery. They run their main operations in-house but use the data center for backup, in case of data loss.
A few do the opposite, calling upon the data center’s storage for their main operations and maintaining a local backup. That’s because, Mead says, the data center includes several safeguards a local system might not have, such as an uninterruptable power system and 24/7 monitoring.
Pricing for data center use varies based on factors like how many storage cabinets a business needs and how much data needs to run in and out of the facility each day.
However, Mead says ISG has found one change it believes will make the facility less expensive to operate. At the Wichita data center, the company has been testing a hot aisle-cold aisle system in which, in alternating aisles, heat coming off the back of servers is captured and sent directly out of the room to be cooled, so it doesn’t spread through the room. In other aisles, cool air is forced up through the floor.
Mead says the limited test has worked well enough that ISG plans to expand the concept to other aisles in the Wichita facility.