Photo: Facebook

This announcement comes from Jay Parikh VP of infrastructure engineering at Facebook:

We’re thrilled to announce that Altoona, Iowa, will be the home for Facebook’s newest data center.

For most people, Facebook is something pretty simple. It’s a service you visit every day to connect with the people and things you care about. But behind the scenes, Facebook is a global service of immense scale and complexity—over 1 billion people use Facebook every month, and every day there are more than 2.7 billion Likes and over 2.4 billion content items shared with friends.

In the coming years, as our service continues to grow and people share and connect in more ways, we need to make sure that our technical infrastructure also continues to scale. Our goal is not just to deliver you a fast, reliable experience on Facebook every day—we also want to help make connectivity a universal opportunity. Our data centers are essential for making that happen.

Altoona will be our fourth owned and operated data center, and our third in the United States. (The others are in Prineville, OR; Forest City, NC; and Luleå, Sweden.) The facility will feature the same Open Compute Project server designs and innovative outdoor-air cooling system that our others do, but it will also incorporate evolutionary improvements to the building design, networking architecture, and more. When complete, Altoona will be among the most advanced and energy efficient facilities of its kind.

We’re excited to have found a new home in Iowa, which has an abundance of wind-generated power and is home to a great talent pool that will help build and operate the facility. We plan to break ground this summer and expect to begin serving user traffic in 2014.

We’re especially appreciative of all the partners who helped make this project happen. Facebook’s mission is to connect the world. Thanks to Iowa, we’re building the global infrastructure to bring the next billion people online.

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Four economic development organizations representing five Plains states have signed on to sponsor the ninth annual event, which will take place May 19 – 21, 2013 at the Westin Stonebriar in Dallas, Texas.

LiveXchange sponsors from the Plains will include:

• Joplin Regional Partnership (Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma)
• Overland Park Chamber of Commerce (Kansas)
• Quad Cities (Iowa, Illinois)
• Greater Oklahoma City Chamber (Oklahoma)

Sponsors representing the U.S. South, Southwest, Great Lakes, and New England/Mid-Atlantic will also be participating. A current list of all sponsors can be found by clicking here.

To learn more about LiveXchange, or to apply to attend, please click here.

The post LIVEXCHANGE 2013: Economic Developers from the U.S. Plains Sign On to Sponsor LiveXchange appeared first on Business Facilities.

As of December 2012, SumTotal Systems, Inc. will make West Glen Town Center in West Des Moines, IA its new home. With over 100 employees, the company provides strategic human capital management (HCM) solutions.

Metonic Real Estate Services Representative Jeremy Smith conveyed excitement over SumTotal’s commitment to West Glen, saying, “SumTotal is a wonderful fit for West Glen. With more than 100 full-time employees, SumTotal will bring greater vitality to West Glen’s daytime atmosphere.”

SumTotal Vice President of Human Resources Richard Oyen said the company is excited to expand its presence in Iowa with the move to the Promenade Office Building. “It is arguably the best building in the West Des Moines market, with extensive glass lines and extremely efficient floor plans. The numerous retail amenities in this development create a convenient and productive environment,” Oyen said. “We have added more than 50 new employees in our Iowa Center of Excellence since January 2011. Our new, expanded center will position us for further growth and support our recruiting and retention efforts.”

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