The Spokane area’s largest data center, TierPoint in Liberty Lake, has been acquired by Cequel Data Centers, LLC, a St. Louis-based company with similar operations across the United States.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed. But the size of the transaction was “significant,” according to TierPoint CEO Octavio Morales. He said he could not elaborate on the sale.

While the amount of the purchase was not disclosed, a press release noted that five financial services firms were involved: Goldman Sachs, CapitalSource Bank, US Bank, ING Capital and CoBank.

Morales said TierPoint’s 24 current employees will not be affected. The main goal of the deal, he added, was to provide more capital to help the company grow and reach more Northwest customers.

TierPoint operates three data centers at its campus in Liberty Lake. Together the buildings provide more than 30,000 square feet of raised-floor data-center space and almost 4.4 megawatts of power. Its third data center building also pioneered using geothermal cooling water to control building heat.

The founding investor in TierPoint is Bernard Daines, one of the area’s leading technology advisers. Daines is no longer a manager of the company, having sold his interest to the company’s other partners.

TierPoint’s list of regional clients includes several banks and dozens of Northwest companies including f5, Coldwater Creek, IT-Lifeline and Red Lion Hotels.

The decision to acquire TierPoint was largely based on its offering a location in “one of the safest areas of the United States, with relatively low power costs and high fiber connectivity,” said Paul Estes, the CEO of Cequel Data Centers.

TierPoint’s strategic focus will continue on expansion into colocation, managed technology services and cloud computing services, Estes said.

(Photo: 2007 SR photo)  TierPoint executives, from left, Bernard Daines, Octavio Morales, Chris Walter and Dan Seliger at their headquarters in Liberty Lake.

The Port of Quincy has sold 12 acres in its industrial park to Amway, the giant direct-sales company that distributes thousands of household products.

Both the Coeur d’Alene and Post Falls school districts are ramping up their broadband connections, installing 2-gigabit fiber connections provided by Fatbeam Inc.

Liberty Lake-based TierPoint recently announced it's finished a major backbone upgrade. For businesses and major enterprises, this amounts to fairly major news. The upgrade involves full 10 Gigabit Ethernet connections all across the company's network

The privately held data operations center and hosting company upgraded both the Liberty Lake and Seattle locations, said Craig Brandvold, TierPoint's marketing manager.

TierPoint has six 10Gbps carrier links that carry Internet in and out of the Liberty Lake site, plus two 10Gbps links that connect that location with its Seattle center.

Said Dan Seliger, the company's chief technology officer: “Those who get their Internet service from us will see a faster connection, very low latency, and even more reliable service, and those who host with us will also find more bandwidth available at very attractive rates.”

Come Sunday, Spokesman.com and our print version Spokesman-Review business section will have a story on TierPoint, in Liberty Lake, using aquifer water to cool its servers.

The new project is called TierPoint 3, and is estimated to cost more than $8 million to put together. It may be just one of a few data centers anywhere that use underground water to chill their interiors.

To read a bit about the innovative idea, here’s a link to the TierPointe announcement.

TierPoint’s managers say they hope to make it one of the biggest non-dedicated data centers in the Northwest. Once the work is finished, the new center should start operations in spring 2011.

The story draws a comparison to other buildings that also tap the aquifer. Also covered is the method used by Yahoo in taking outside air to cool its very large data center in Quincy.

Washington state leaders feel they’re back in the data center game.

Last week Gov. Chris Gregoire signed a bill that could help data centers expand or set up shop in Washington rural counties. The law allows tax breaks for data centers in any county other than Spokane, King, Pierce, Snohomish, Clark and Thurston.

Though Washington is facing massive budget deficits, state leaders were clearly warned that without a bill that cut sales taxes on new data center equipment, the future of expansion by Yahoo, Microsoft and other tech firms was minimal.

From 2006 until 2008, Microsoft, Intuit and Yahoo all built large data centers in Grant County, using the Port of Quincy’s low power rates and redundant fiber connectivity to justify the investment.