Involta to Build $16M Data Center Near Pittsburgh

PITTSBURGH, Pa. — Involta LLC, the Iowa-based company that operates two data centers in Youngstown, today announced it plans to build a $16 million data center in Armstrong County, Pa., with UPMC as its anchor tenant.

The 39,570-square-foot data center will be built in the Northpointe Business Park off Route 28 near Freeport, Pa.

Involta said the “high-security, concurrently maintainable data center will also house mission-critical computer systems and provide related managed services” for other clients in the region.

UPMC said it will leverage Involta’s assets and services to address the health care industry’s quality and cost challenges. The data center will provide UPMC “a more scalable and elastic IT capability while achieving its hybrid-cloud computing strategy,” the company said.

“It will allow us to expand our capacity for storing and transmitting data at a lower cost than building it ourselves, while also improving our ability to recover and restore critical data in the event of emergencies,” said UPMC’s chief information officer, Ed McCallister, in a prepared statement.“Software as a service (SaaS) is changing the dynamics of how and where we secure, manage and operate our systems.”

More than 40% of Involta’s revenue is generated by health-care related organizations, according to Bruce Lehrman, founder and CEO of Involta.

The company was founded in 2007. In June 2015, it purchased the former DRS LLC, which was established in Youngstown in 2000 as NSI Group.

Involta assets include 14 data centers, more than 5,500 fiber miles and nearly 200 employees. Involta’s Pennsylvania footprint includes connections to the company’s Ohio data centers in Akron, Columbus, Cleveland and Youngstown.

Pictured: Rendering of data center Involta plans to build in Freeport, Pa.

Copyright 2024 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.