PAETEC Holding Corp. (PAET) has unveiled plans for an expansive, high-tech data center in Andover, Mass., approximately 24 miles north of Boston. In addition to the existing data centers in Bethlehem and Conshohocken, Pa., this is the first in a series of new centers the company is planning to open nationwide over the next five years. The center serves and supports companies in New England, along the East Coast, and nationwide with a need for geographic redundancy and reduced latency. The Andover center is scheduled to open in June 2010.

“This data center will meet the growing data-oriented demands of large businesses around the country,” said Charles Field, vice president and general manager for the New England region. “As common business applications are moving towards the cloud, we’ll be there to serve them with the industry-leading service our customers have come to expect.”

The two-story, 92,700-square-foot facility has more than 40,000 square feet of raised floor space available for customers to colocate their servers, routers and other communication equipment. Supported by a staff of 11 with a 24/7 Technical Assistance Center (TAC), the center has redundant power to the grid, backed up by five 1,400 horsepower, one-megawatt generators with 30,000 gallons of diesel fuel. The center also boasts 2,000 tons of cooling capacity to maintain the center at the optimum temperature for customer equipment.

In addition to standard data center offerings, customers will have access to PAETEC’s menu of services such as Data Back-up and Recovery, Dedicated Server, Hosted Network Security Services and even centralizing an IP-based PBX in the data center to serve employees.

“This center will serve not only as a flagship for PAETEC, but also as one of the leading centers in the nation in terms of size, reliability and support,” said Christopher Lodge, vice president for Data Center Services, PAETEC. “We have more than a decade of experience in data centers, and we’re designing this center based on extensive feedback from our customers over the past 10 years.”

The center also will include the latest advancements in physical security, including precautions against flooding, fire and natural disasters. A lounge and built-in fitness center is also available to customers.

Across the nation, including available space in its central offices, PAETEC has 1.4 million square feet of data center space.