Friday, September 30, 2011
By Paul Crockett, KRMG
TULSA, Okla. — Google’s server farm at the Mid-America Industrial Park just south of Pryor is up and running. Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin was on hand for the official connection that was made just before 4:00 p.m. on Thursday afternoon.
The facility had been scheduled to go online a few years ago but that was put on hold when the economy took a nose dive in 2008. 106 people are now employed at the facility and more may be hired as the search engine giant expands.
Google’s Joe Kava, the senior director of data center and construction for the search engine giant, says the center at Pryor is very efficient. “This data center is operating at about half of the overall power of a typical data center this size.”
Kava says the Pryor site had the right mix of people, power and property for one of their data centers. “So everything came together and ultimately it was the perfect decision for us.”
The date center won’t be the only Google building on the site according to Kava. “We’re also announcing that we’re just kicking off another building. It won’t be a server building but it will be a support building.”