The Dallas-based Stream Data is partnering with broadband giant Cox Communications to connect the facilities to the rest of the world.

At full buildout, the campus will support up to 2 million square feet of data center buildings, making it the largest hyperscale campus development in the greater Phoenix region.

Stream Data is the latest in a recent string of large data centers coming to the West Valley. A number of companies including Microsoft, Compass Data Centers, Vantage Data Centers and Stack Infrastructure have announced plans for projects.

West Valley data centers are the power behind many of today’s online services. They provide secure facilities to house large volumes of servers, routers, switches, and other equipment used in high volume data storage and processing.

Expansive campus for enterprise customers 

Stream Data Centers, in partnership with Cox’s commercial arm, Cox Business, is establishing a multi-tenant campus for hyperscale and enterprise customers for fiber connectivity and high speed to major markets, officials from both companies said.

“At a time when economic growth is crucial to the economy, this pairing directly serves businesses of all sizes as they store, protect and share data across the region and the world,” said Chad Rodriguez, vice president, network and cloud, Stream Data Centers.

Adding Cox, the largest telecom provider in Arizona and the U.S., ensures that business customers will have high performance and low latency connectivity, Rodriguez said.

The Goodyear data center combines with Cox Business’ portfolio of services including connectivity, security, video, voice, colocation, managed services and cloud offerings, all of which are supported by a team of local experts, said Ed Aaronson, vice president of Cox Business.

“Data centers are a key component to the economic growth of our community.  Our collaboration with Stream Data Centers illustrates the importance of blending data centers and connectivity. This is critical for our local businesses as they compete in a rapidly growing, data-driven economy,” Aaronson said.

Phase I opening in August 

Stream Data’s Phase I facility is a 418,200-square-foot hyperscale data center on 157 acres in Goodyear. It will support approximately 40.5 megawatts (MW) of critical load, to be delivered in the third quarter of 2020 with an initial 4.5 MW of capacity. Almost 127 acres of divisible land is still available for build-to-suit or custom data center development.

Stream’s customers will be able to interconnect their Stream services with other data centers, or to their local offices, via either dark fiber or internet transport services with speeds up to 100 gigabits per second (Gbps).

At least 30 acres of the campus are dedicated for an APS onsite substation with ultimate power capacity of 350 MW.

Greater Phoenix among fastest-growing data center markets

APS and Salt River Project’s affordable and reliable energy are one reason companies cite for moving to the Phoenix region. Other reasons include minimal weather disruptions, lower land prices, tax incentives and quick access to freeways.

Metro Phoenix was in the top five in the U.S. for data center leasing, construction and net absorption in the second half of 2019, driven by increased demand from cloud and enterprise users, according to CBRE’s U.S. Data Center Trends Report. Phoenix alo is the fifth largest data center market in the U.S., with 229.9 MW of inventory.

Half a dozen West Valley data centers announced in past year 

In the past year alone, the West Valley — and Goodyear in particular — are attracting many of the projects including:

• Compass Data Centers is planning an eight-facility project in Goodyear that eventually will encompass over 1.8 million square feet. Two new data centers will be built initially at Bullard Avenue and Yuma Road.

• Microsoft is building three “world class” data centers on a 279-acre site near the Phoenix Goodyear Airport that will rely entirely on renewable energy.

• Stack Infrastructure is planning a data center in Avondale, which will add 1 million square feet of data center space.

• Vantage Data Centers, a leading provider of wholesale data centers in North America, is building a large-scale data center campus in Goodyear.

• Amazon also recently purchased land in Goodyear’s data center cluster, and reportedly is building a data center to complement its other operations in the area.

Data centers create jobs, income gains for workers 

The U.S. data center market is expected to reach revenues of over $69 billion by 2024, according to Research and Markets.

In addition to storing, protecting and sharing data, research shows that these centers also contribute to job growth and income gains.

In March 2018, the research firm RTI International published a report that stated that for every 1 data center worker, five jobs are supported elsewhere in the economy by operating expenditures after the surge in jobs caused by capital expenditures.