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Print Edition StoriesFriday, June 26, 2009
How I See It
Connecticut wants to be home to your data centers
By Dale Bruckhart
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The state of Connecticut has great natural resources, a long history of entrepreneurship, and as they say in the real estate business, location, location, location. Abundant water power, timber and access to domestic and overseas markets made Connecticut a manufacturing powerhouse during the 19th and 20th centuries.
Data centers have replaced the water-powered wheels and turbines as the engines of our economy, but many of the resources that made Connecticut a manufacturing giant are just as vital today. Data centers require clean, reliable and ample supplies of electricity; access to unlimited bandwidth, preferably from competing service providers; and a work force with a good work ethic and an aptitude for technology. A high school or technical school degree is all that is needed for entry-level data center jobs; computer geeks and nerds are encouraged to apply.
Connecticut has many things going for it, and our elected leaders, executives and higher education leaders need to nurture our natural resources and get the word out.
Many of the leading network providers have built telecommunications facilities across the state because of our location between New York and Boston. These fiber-optic lines terminate at hub sites in Stamford, New Haven, Waterbury, Hartford and New London, creating the equivalent of railroad stations served by competing carriers.
Deregulation has created a thriving, competitive environment for very high speed network services and the state is no longer dominated by a single telecom company. As a result, the cost of bandwidth has declined, and fiber-optic services are accessible in many office buildings, factories, schools, town halls and hospitals across the state.
It comes as somewhat of a surprise that we Connecticut Yankees live in a statistically safer state than any of our industrialized competitors. Presidential declarations of disaster have occurred 13 times in Connecticut since 1954 and of those, 12 declarations were due to coastal flooding or hurricanes. Only the blizzard of 1996 impacted the state’s interior regions. Connecticut is a very safe location to build data centers with access to the fiber-optic highways and crossroads passing through the state.
Applicants for entry-level IT jobs must demonstrate reasonable communication skills and should master tasks such as formatting worksheets, designing presentations and working with database records. High schools, vocational-tech schools, community colleges and private technical schools need to offer programs for young adults seeking to enter the IT profession upon graduation. Qualified high school graduates along with Connecticut’s well-educated, mature work force (approximately one third of our population holds a bachelor’s degree or higher) are valuable assets to attract new tech investment.
The greatest deterrent to data center construction in Connecticut is the cost of electricity. Electricity in Connecticut is almost twice the national average and ranks just behind Hawaii as the most expensive state in the country. In 2006, the Connecticut General Assembly established a tax credit program to encourage the production of digital media and motion pictures in Connecticut. Similar legislation could offset the cost of electricity and encourage high-tech companies and legacy industries to consider or reconsider Connecticut as a state that’s friendly toward tech investment.
Connecticut should continue to leverage the same assets that powered our economy in the past: location, access to markets and population centers, road and rail infrastructure, a safe environment with seasonal recreational options, an educated work force and perhaps our greatest asset — a climate that gives CIOs, elected officials and anyone who requires access to critical data peace of mind.
Dale Bruckhart is vice president of public sector marketing for Digital BackOffice, a managed Internet infrastructure company based in Milford, Conn.
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