Liberty Center One Prepares for New Data Center Audit Standards and Future Growth

ROYAL OAK, Mich., May 31, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Liberty Center One, an enterprise class data center in Royal Oak, MI, completed its SAS (Statement on Auditing Standards) 70 Type II audit this past January and immediately moved onto preparing for the new set of standards developed by the AICPA (American Institute of Certified Public Accountants).

It's par for the course these days at Liberty as the company's management finds itself in continuous motion.

"Between the explosive growth we've experienced over the past nine months, the expansion of our network capacity and the continuous improvement measures we take every day, our customers have kept us very busy," commented Tim Mullahy, Liberty's Managing Director. "The completion of our SAS70 Type II audit was just one step in many that we've taken to support our customers and their auditing and reporting needs."

Several of Liberty Center One's clients simultaneously completed their own SAS70 Type II audits - an auditing standard utilized by service organizations to demonstrate their internal controls and security practices to their clients.

"We provide hosting infrastructure as a service to many customers in the financial, health care and IT services businesses and they are bound by corporate reporting policies to conduct a SAS70 Type II audit," explained Mullahy. "To support our customers, we commissioned the independent SAS70 audit by Plante & Moran so that our customer's reporting obligations would be complete and so that these same clients would be assured that we have and are using proper controls."  

Conducting a comprehensive SAS70 audit requires substantial financial and time investments, and Liberty Center One considered the review an important aspect of documenting its continuing commitment to process improvement.

"Another important factor contributing to our decision to hire Plante & Moran, was their proficiency in understanding the evolving AICPA standards for data centers," said Pat Turner, Liberty Center One Chief Technical Officer.

As of June 15, 2011, the AICPA is replacing SAS70 with Statement on Standards for Attestation Engagements (SSAE16); a more robust version of SAS70 with the intention of updating the US service organization reporting standard so that it complies with the new international service organization reporting standard.

"Our engagement with the audit staff at Plante & Moran convinced us that they were best suited to guide us through the migration from SAS70 to SSAE16," observed Turner. "Plante & Moran's exhaustive knowledge of AICPA standards, their 84 years of experience and rigorous standards of excellence, made them the best choice to work with us on our compliance program. Our clients can be confident that the findings of Plante & Moran's audits accurately reflect Liberty Center One's reliable, highly secure internal controls, for which they can hold us accountable."

Some of the aspects of the controls audited by Plante & Moran demonstrated Liberty's attention to detail and commitment to protecting its customers more precious resources. One example was Liberty's investment in its own Load Bank, installed onsite in the facility's generator yard. Most commercial data centers will bring in a portable load bank once or twice a year to run its back-up generators on varying load to verify their ability to provide continuous power to the facility. Such testing can cost upwards of $5,000 - $10,000 for each occurrence.

"We didn't want anything to get in the way of performing frequent testing and maintenance on critical parts of our infrastructure," explained Mullahy. "Relying on an outside service to do this type of test becomes discretionary spending and when it comes to providing a fail-safe environment with 100% uptime, we did not want to inhibit our technical staff in any manner, so we made the investment in our own load bank."

Liberty's load bank test is conducted in accordance with the National Fire Prevention Association (NFPA) standards for health care facilities to ensure compliance with HIPPA standards.

The approach taken by the staff at Liberty Center One is paying off dividends with double digit growth over the past year. And with this growth has come some important upgrades, including an expansion of its network capacity. Liberty now boasts three separate fiber paths into the data center from three different providers. Recent upgrades allow Liberty to provide its customers with a fully redundant Gigabit network via multiple, diverse ISPs.

"It was always our goal to stay ahead of the curve," says President and CEO Rex Smith. "In this business, you cannot stand pat, you have to continually improve your processes and deliverables if you want to ensure that your customers have the best in class environment for their IT services. As we plan for future expansion at Liberty, this is our sole objective."

To learn more about Liberty Center One or to request a tour, contact Tim Mullahy at 734-507-0521 or via e-mail at [email protected]

About Plante & Moran

Plante & Moran is the nation's 12th largest certified public accounting and business advisory firms, providing clients with financial, human capital, operations, strategy, technology, and family wealth management services. Plante & Moran, headquartered in Southfield, Michigan, has been recognized by a number of organizations, including FORTUNE magazine, as one of the country's best places to work.  For more information please visit www.plantemoran.com.

About Liberty Center One

Liberty Center One is an enterprise class, tier 3 data center located in Royal Oak, MI. Liberty offers a full range of technology solutions, including fully managed, co-located, virtual, dedicated and shared hosting services. With its high power density architecture, Liberty can deliver more than 250 watts of fully redundant power per square foot to keep modern, high density computing equipment running without interruption. Liberty's high availability network is protected by a 100% core Cisco network configured in a N+3 redundant mesh. Internet services are provided via multiple ISPs with full gigabit redundancy. Contact Liberty Center One by calling 734-507-0521, by visiting www.libertycenterone.com, or by emailing [email protected]

FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT:
Tim Mullahy
Liberty Center One
734-507-0521

SOURCE Liberty Center One