With Okanagan wine, add bits and bytes

British Columbia's Okanagan Valley, long known for its award-winning vineyards, picturesque golf courses and sparkling lakes, is bolstering its reputation with a decidedly unromantic venture - electronic data storage.

Thanks to its stable environment, abundant network bandwidth and proximity to a talented work force and cheap power, high-tech experts predict the Okanagan will become a major information storage shed for companies.

The area's sixth data centre is set to open in Kelowna in December and local entrepreneurs and high-tech experts are confident others will follow.

The key feature that makes the Kelowna area ideal for data storage is the robust fibre-optic pipeline in place, says Dr. Ian Stuart, dean of the Faculty of Management at the University of British Columbia's Okanagan campus in Kelowna.

"The second most important factor is people ... the Okanagan has a high level of sophisticated knowledge workers, graduates of computer science degree program or engineering" from UBC's Kelowna campus, he adds.

Equally important is the area's stable environment, according to others familiar with the region. Geologic surveys indicate that the Okanagan is about 240 kilometres from the nearest earthquake zone; and it is safe from other natural disasters, such as floods, tornadoes and major storms, which could knock out the computers that are the backbone of the data storage sector.

Robert Fine, director of economic development for the Regional District of the Central Okanagan Valley, says the burgeoning data storage sector is a bonus for Kelowna, which underwent a "crisis moment" in 2001 when Western Star Trucks Holdings Ltd. closed its manufacturing plant there.

"The companies we are attracting, including IBM, are a sign to the world that this is a safe place to do business," he says. "We are not earthquake prone, we have an international airport with a runway that is being expanded to 8,900 feet, we have a safe climate and we are not a big city that is vulnerable to terrorist attacks.''

The most recent addition to the area's information storehouses is the conversion of the former truck plant into a data centre by Gigacenter Services Corp. of Kelowna. The $75-million, 225,000-square-foot structure is being engineered by IBM Canada Ltd. in partnership with Kelowna-based RackForce Networks Inc., which specializes in server hosting and currently runs three data centres.

IBM will lease 70,000 square feet of space in the facility, which is being marketed as GigaCenter, to provide data processing and storage services to as many as 500 of its customers, beginning in December.

IBM considers the Okanagan one of the most preferable locations in Canada for data storage, largely because the area's climate and seismic conditions ensure that it can serve its clientele without interruption, says Rick Ellery, IBM's Vancouver-based territory services leader for B.C.

"When you look at Canada's geographies and those with minimal amounts of risk ... the Okanagan stands out as an area free from those kinds of issues," he says.

IBM is also high on the GigaCenter because its use of renewable hydroelectric power from the nearby Columbia River, Mr. Ellery says. As well, a handful of features built into the complex mean the building will be more energy efficient and "greener" than most data centres, a key consideration as the environment becomes a bigger issue.

"A green data centre focus has emerged in the last year or two, so it is important for our customers to be good corporate citizens by minimizing their IT carbon footprint. The basis of green IT is the use of non-dirty power that is hydro generated," as is the case at the GigaCenter, he says.

Brian Fry, vice-president of sales and marketing for RackForce Networks and Gigacenter Services, says cooling hundreds of computers and the facility's workspaces will be five times more efficient by using a high-capacity water system rather than traditional electrically powered air conditioners; in addition, backup generators will be fuelled 85 per cent by natural gas rather than diesel fuel, meaning less air pollution.

These and other energy-saving features, when combined with the use of hydroelectric power, mean GigaCenter will use nearly 66 per cent less energy, reducing costs for its customers and at the same considerably reducing the building's environmental footprint, says Tim Dufour, chief executive officer of RackForce and Gigacenter Services.

Another Kelowna data storage company that's meeting the demand for less expensive and green data stores is Iron Diamond Systems, which provides outsourced data centre infrastructure services, such as network disaster recovery, data backup and data replication.

Like IBM, the company was drawn to the Okanagan because of its seismic stability and cheap power, which means it can offer the safe and green data storage demanded by companies that are sensitive to the environment and cognizant of the need to safely store data, says president and CEO David Tarasenko.

Mr. Fine says data centres are not the only companies he is attempting to lure to the Okanagan.

Green electricity at rates that are among the cheapest in Canada, access to an updated highway system, direct flights to Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary and Toronto and plenty of engineering and technology graduates from the three-year-old UBC Kelowna campus make the area attractive to a wide variety of industries, he says.

These and other attributes - including proximity to prime vacation country and the fact that Kelowna is seen as a great city to raise a family - are already propelling the area's growth.

"Data centres are obvious for the region but at this point we are working our way through the planning process to decide our priority ... should data centres be a priority? How does it match to our labour pool? We are now doing an analysis to decide on the Okanagan's future economic direction."