Bluebird Network tunes up Springfield Underground space

Bluebird Underground LLC soon will complete an $11 million expansion designed to accommodate more data center tenants.

The expansion of the center, located 85 feet below ground in the Springfield Underground, includes more than 10,000 square feet of so-called white space, reserved for information technology equipment including server cabinets, racks and air conditioning units, company officials say.

For its clients, Bluebird houses server space, websites and other data. The data center is owned by Columbia-based Bluebird Network LLC, which also offers broadband internet to clients.

The expansion comes as the 2019 N. Le Compte Road data center was running out of space for new clients, but there was also benefit to existing clients.

“For current tenants, they got an amazing amount added in the realm of reliability. There were areas where we weren’t as reliable as we wanted to be,” said Todd Murren, general manager of Bluebird Network.

Bluebird Network has about 80 clients, he said. They pay by the month, and the cost is determined by space and usage.

Murren said reliability was increased with the expansion as Bluebird added power-loss redundancies.

The expansion is all but complete, Murren said, with finishing touches being finalized through October. Three contractors bid on the project, with Carson-Mitchell Inc. winning with a roughly $10 million bid. Murren said the remaining $1 million budgeted for the expansion was for internal work.

The expansion increases the data center’s size by about a third, up from 20,000 square feet previously. Because of the variability of the rentable space, Murren said estimating how many new clients can be added is difficult.

He added the underground data center is appealing to local business owners because it’s the only one of its kind in Springfield. A software developer, for instance, can rent space for their data to be housed in a space they can physically visit, he said.

The space
The greatest benefit of having the data center underground, Murren said, is the protection from natural and man-made disasters.

A business can rent a small amount of space, starting at less than an inch, and scale upward to thousands of square feet. Some companies rent out a space large enough for desks for IT engineers to work on location.

Bluebird performs services for a mix of local and nonlocal clients, including international organizations.

Carson-Mitchell’s work included moving Bluebird’s two existing generators and installing an additional one in a new courtyard.

The generators, a product of Rolls-Royce subsidiary MTU Friedrichshafen, can create 6 megawatts of on-site power for Bluebird.

Jason Carson, CEO of Carson-Mitchell, said they added a building that houses uninterruptible power supplies and two new data center rooms, which increase power reliability.

Charles Gavins, systems architect with Southern Supply Co., said his company has housed its software in the center since before Bluebird owned it. He said during that time, there was only one outage, which was caused by a lightning strike.

Since that outage, he said Bluebird has improved its reliability.

“Bluebird’s done a lot of updates to the redundancy and power backup systems,” Givens said, noting his company spends about $4,000 a month with Bluebird.

Dan Brewer, vice president of information technology with Wilson Logistics Inc., said his company uses Bluebird so its data isn’t exposed to potential dangers. He said they can’t afford to keep trucking delivery and employee information in one of their six facilities, because if a disaster struck just one location, it could dramatically affect business in the rest.

Brewer said his company spends about $10,000 a month with Bluebird, and has been a client with them since their acquisition of SpringNet.

Changing hands
The funding for the project came from Macquarie Group Ltd., an Australian investment banking company that purchased Bluebird in September 2019.

Murren said that the company asked Bluebird what it needed, and funded the expansion to allow for more tenants and greater security and reliability. Bluebird Network originally was founded in 1999 by a group of Missouri and Illinois telephone companies. Bluebird Data Center was founded in 2014, and its name changed to Bluebird Network in 2017, when the company moved to Springfield Underground as it acquired SpringNet Underground from City Utilities of Springfield.

Murren said Bluebird Data Center currently employs five people, with plans to soon expand to seven.

5G deployment
The physical expansion of Bluebird Data Center comes as Bluebird Network is growing its fiber-optic 5G-centric network access.

According to a Bluebird Network news release, high-speed internet, cloud connections and data transport services are now available to Strafford businesses, schools, health care facilities, governments and wireless internet service providers.

The announcement comes on the heels of the Federal Communication Commission’s June decision to push for greater 5G access across the country. Bluebird Network President and CEO Michael Morey said FCC policy makes it easier to expand 5G.

5G allows for faster speeds, but previously needed many large towers to cover the area. Companies can now use smaller antennae that are more easily deployed in cities.

“The FCC is trying to streamline the rules that governments can use to regulate these small-cell 5G deployments in cities,” Morey said.