Online Technologies opens third data center, plans to increase staff 30% by 2009

Unless you're 12 years old, you don't usually hide your money under a mattress, or seal it in a mason jar and bury it in the backyard. Most people have bank accounts – and these days even babies are getting them.

So, if people treat their money as important, why not their data?

That's where Online Technologies Corporation (OTC) comes in. The company is a data center that offers a variety of services but, at their core, they are the keepers of a company's biggest asset, its data.

"We're the Fort Knox for data," Mike Klein, president of OTC, says. "You put your money in a bank and data in a data center."

OTC now has three data centers. They filled up their first space in Ann Arbor. Opened a second in Flint Township, filled that up too, and have just opened a third expansion in Avis Farms high-tech park south of Ann Arbor.

The company began in 1994 but they didn't really start growing until 2003 when the company went through a manager buyout and shifted from Internet services to data storage.

"In the last five years we've gone from 800-square-feet of data center space to 40,000-square-feet," Klein says.

And, with expansion, jobs usually follow. OTC has added four people since January bringing their total in Southeast Michigan to 15 and, Klein says, they plan to increase that number by 30 percent in the next year.

OTC stores and secures data, that's their bread-and-butter, but they also offer infrastructure for businesses that can't afford or don't have the means to establish their own servers. These businesses have the software, just not the hardware, so in steps OTC.

Disaster relief is also a major aspect of OTC. A company has their data but uses OTC to back it up, like a huge extra hard drive. For instance GM uses OTC's Flint Township site as their backup to disaster. Having it over 50 miles away ensures data safety is something occurs.

Klein says that 60 percent of companies that experience a "disaster" and that don't have a data center backing them up are out of business within the next five years.

"Very high-end auto, insurance, and manufacturing companies use our data center," he says. "Everything from Fortune 500 companies to low-end startups, financial businesses, and insurances companies. And we're starting to see a lot of biotech. That's really picking up."

Source: Mike Klein, president of Online Technologies Corporation
Writer: Terry Parris, Jr.