CenturyLink opens new Minneapolis-St. Paul data center

MONROE, La., May 20, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- CenturyLink, Inc. (NYSE: CTL) today announced the opening of a new data center in Minneapolis-St. Paul. The new data center is designed to serve the region's growing demand for colocation, cloud, managed hosting and network services.

The Minneapolis-St. Paul data center, known as MP2, is built to support up to 6 megawatts of IT load and 100,000 square feet of raised floor space to meet the long-term needs of CenturyLink and its clients.

"We continually hear from Twin Cities businesses that want local access to CenturyLink's flexible, enterprise-ready IT solutions," said David Meredith, senior vice president and general manager, CenturyLink Technology Solutions. "Our new Twin Cities data center will provide companies in industries such as retail, consumer brands, financial services, healthcare and media with an incredible, distinctive data center experience. We look forward to helping these businesses become more agile, secure and sustainable through end-to-end solutions that deliver bottom-line results."

MP2 is the region's first multitenant Tier III-constructed data center certified by the Uptime Institute, and also holds Gold certification status from the U.S. Green Building Institute's Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design. It is located in Shakopee, Minn., a Minneapolis suburb.

"Today's businesses are always looking for cost-effective IT services and solutions to help meet their business challenges and remain competitive," said Duane Ring, CenturyLink Midwest region president. "CenturyLink's new MP2 data center helps the region's organizations by providing an integrated suite of colocation, cloud and managed hosting solutions."

MP2, which joins CenturyLink's existing data center in the Minneapolis-St. Paul region, enables businesses to deploy hybrid cloud solutions that leverage network, colocation, managed hosting and managed services.

"CenturyLink has made significant investments in third-party certifications so enterprise customers know what they're getting from day one to protect mission-critical infrastructures and enterprise data in its multi-tenant Shakopee data center," wrote Rick Kurtzbein, research analyst, multi-tenant data centers, at 451 Research, in his May 13 report, "CenturyLink open for business with new Minneapolis datacenter."

He added, "The Shakopee facility's Tier III rating and room for expansion, along with the CenturyLink IP backbone and global data center footprint, will appeal to local enterprises and may also put Minneapolis on the map as a backup/disaster recovery option for firms located elsewhere."

Construction of the Minneapolis-St. Paul data center began in October 2013. The facility is one of more than 55 data centers CenturyLink operates, with more than 2.5 million square feet of gross raised floor space throughout North America, Europe and Asia. The company, ranked by Synergy Research and Frost & Sullivan as the second-largest retail colocation provider in the United States, offers robust colocation, cloud and managed services across its footprint of data centers powered by an advanced fiber network, high-availability SLAs and Uptime Institute Tier III-certified facilities.

The opening of the Minneapolis-St. Paul data center follows recent news that the company would expand its global data center presence in eight markets and invest in growing its CenturyLink Cloud network of public cloud data centers. 

About CenturyLink Technology Solutions
CenturyLink Technology Solutions delivers innovative managed services for global businesses on virtual, dedicated and colocation platforms. For more information, visit www.centurylink.com/technology.

About CenturyLink
CenturyLink is the third largest telecommunications company in the United States and is recognized as a leader in the network services market by technology industry analyst firms. The company is a global leader in cloud infrastructure and hosted IT solutions for enterprise customers. CenturyLink provides data, voice and managed services in local, national and select international markets through its high-quality advanced fiber optic network and multiple data centers for businesses and consumers. The company also offers advanced entertainment services under the CenturyLink^® Prism™ TV and DIRECTV brands. Headquartered in Monroe, La., CenturyLink is an S&P 500 company and is included among the Fortune 500 list of America's largest corporations. For more information, visit www.centurylink.com.

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SOURCE CenturyLink, Inc.