The new data center, set on a 14.3-acre campus, is being built in five phases, with a final size expected to be 221,000 square feet. That leaves room for another three-phase build-out to take total floor space to 300,000 square feet if needed, Harris said.

It is scheduled to open next April.

The business model for the new data center sprang from customers who use Forsythe's colocation RFP (request for proposal) management service, Harris said.

"We began having a lot of questions from clients who want to take advantage of wholesale colocation capabilities but were too small, and yet for whom retail colocation cages are not enough," he said.

In data center parlance, "wholesale" does not mean available for resale. Instead, it refers to leasing a large turnkey facility complete with power and cooling. "Retail" in the context of colocation services refers to rows of cages inside a data center which offer customers space for their infrastructure but which share power and cooling.

"There's nothing in the middle between retail and wholesale," Harris said. "We realized we could come in between retail and wholesale, add our services, and offer a value that nobody else could offer. We've been building data centers for clients for years. We have the skillsets. We've decided to take advantage of it."

NEXT: "We're Going With The Sweet Spot"