Marshfield Clinic to back up data at TEAM Companies' data center

Marshfield, Wis. - Marshfield Clinic has signed an agreement to locate its disaster recovery center in the TEAM Companies' new data center on the Fitchburg Technology Campus.

The facility, which opened in September, will serve as the back up for the clinic's main data center operation in Marshfield, which is about a two-hour drive from the TEAM data center.

Carl Christiansen, CIO of Marshfield Clinic, has called the TEAM facility "the best designed data center I've ever been in.” He said it is close enough to prevent network problems but far enough away from Marshfield that it meets audit and regulatory requirements.

“We were looking to be somewhere between 100 and 150 miles away from the main data center,” he explained. “The idea is that you want to be far enough away that a single, large natural disaster would not take out both data centers, but close enough that the network latencies, for the network speeds, are not inhibited.

"You can drive to it in a couple of hours, and you can get your system engineers and network engineers to the facility conveniently.” For the disaster recovery center, Christiansen said Marshfield Clinic was looking at somewhere in the neighborhood 48 racks of initial space, which would grow as the business grows.

Data parameters

Phase I of the data center project has been completed. When the second and third phases are completed, the $40 million center will have 60,000 square feet of space for storage and redundancy.

The TEAM center is referred to as “fail-safe” data center with security features such as retina scanners for personal identification, and 14-to-24 inch concrete, steel-reinforced walls that are built to withstand an F4 tornado. F4 storms have winds in excess of 200 miles per hour.

CDW Berbee serves as the anchor tenant. The company has facilities in both the Fitchburg Center and the Fitchburg Technology Campus.

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