Datotel Continues Growth, Moves All Employees to Downtown St. Louis

ST. LOUIS, April 15 /PRNewswire/ -- To commemorate continued growth and the transfer of all employees to its Downtown St. Louis headquarters, Datotel, LLC, a state-of-the-art cloud-computing and colocation provider, is unveiling a program to advance St. Louis entrepreneurialism by investing more than $120,000 of free cloud-computing services to 10 IT Entrepreneur Network (ITEN) members.

Formerly housed in two offices—an administrative office in O'Fallon and the data center in Downtown St. Louis—Datotel will now be completely headquartered in the Globe Democrat building in Downtown St. Louis.  The company's 36 employees will now perform cloud-computing and colocation services, tasks and offerings of all levels from this growing single location.  To dovetail with customer growth, in early April, Datotel began a major investment to double its data center's cooling infrastructure that will facilitate the addition of more cloud-computing capacity and clients.  

"Moving all our employees to one location is key to the growth of Datotel's business and cloud-computing offerings," said David Brown, president of Datotel.  "Downtown has a buzz and energy that we feel is important for a tech company and part of the image we want to communicate to our customers and the public.  Our Downtown office provides more room for growth and is more centrally located for our wide variety of clients.  At the same time, to help build Downtown buzz and fulfill Datotel's core value of bettering the community in which we work, our employees plan to participate in Downtown volunteer efforts and advocate for Downtown St. Louis."

To celebrate Datotel's further evolution from a tiny, entrepreneurial start-up to a full-fledged business with national headquarters, Datotel is partnering with the IT Entrepreneur Network (ITEN) to identify 10 burgeoning companies and help their development with free cloud computing services for one year.  Each company will be eligible for $1,000 per month of Datotel's cloud-computing services for free for a total investment of $120,000 into the ITEN network of companies and St. Louis community.

"When I began Datotel six years ago as a start-up, we were like many of these companies," explained Brown.  "We scratched and clawed our way into growth, finally getting to where we are today.  Knowing how hard that can be, I want to make sure Datotel makes it easier on local start-ups to foster their own growth and the business development of our region.  I see firsthand the deeply innovative talent pool St. Louis has and I want to help it thrive."  

All of ITEN's 120 members will be eligible for winning these services.  A Datotel and ITEN committee will base selection of the 10 winners on the following parameters and criteria:

• Quality of innovative use of technology
• How cloud computing services will help the company achieve its business goals
• How the company takes an active role in bettering the community in which we live and work

"ITEN aims to be a catalyst for the emergence of a thriving entrepreneurial community, and many of the companies in our network are gaining traction in areas such as consumer electronics, media and social networking," said Jim Brasunas, director, ITEN.  "We are excited to partner with Datotel on this new program that will go a long way to helping companies that have a lot of promise."

As companies grow, cloud computing makes it easier for them to add resources.  Cloud computing allows companies to gain access to virtualized and dynamically scalable computing resources on an as-needed basis.  For example, these resources can be as granular as pure CPU cycles provided by utility and grid computing environments or software as a service (SaaS)-based environments.  "For companies that can grow in fits and spurts like many start-ups, cloud computing is ideal," said Brown.

Datotel and ITEN will open the program for entries on April 19 and select the 10 winners in June.  Cloud computing services for each winner will then begin as soon as possible.

For more information on the program, visit www.datotel.com.

About Datotel, LLC

St. Louis-based Datotel is a provider of cloud computing environments and colocation services from its carrier-class data center facility, complemented by a full suite of IT services to manage technology systems.  Datotel has a $10 million state-of-the-art colocation facility managed and designed to provide IT infrastructures and systems a secure, stable and highly available environment.  Datotel does regular work for organizations ranging from Fortune 500 companies to not-for-profits.  For more information, call 314-241-9101, visit www.datotel.com or follow the company on Twitter and Facebook.

About IT Entrepreneur Network

IT Entrepreneur Network (ITEN), www.itenstl.org, is a catalyst for the emergence of a thriving entrepreneurial community for innovative technology ventures in the greater St. Louis region.  Founded in 2008, ITEN supports more than 100 start-up companies through mentoring, networking, services and programs.  The ITEN network connects early-stage companies to the opportunities and resources they need to grow, including investors looking for promising early-stage deals, veteran entrepreneurs with expertise in successful early stage ventures and a diverse team of mentors from a variety of business disciplines.  ITEN is an initiative of the St. Louis IT Coalition and Innovate St. Louis.

SOURCE Datotel, LLC