Harris Corporation -- an outfit that provides computing infrastructure for government agencies -- is selling its super-secure data center in Harrisonburg, Virginia and leaving the "cloud computing" business, saying that both its government and commercial customers prefer hosting "mission-critical information" on their own premises rather than in the proverbial cloud.
The company tells Wired there is still a "strong market" for cloud computing services -- which give businesses access to virtual computing resources across a network -- but its facility outside of Washington, D.C. just didn't suit the bottom line. "This is strictly a case where owning and operating a data center simply wasn't efficient," says Jim Burke, Harris vice president of corporate communications.
Harris opened its 100,000-square-foot facility in May of last year, and it was the company's first and only cloud data center. While the company says that it has a number of commercial customers in the area, Harrisonburg's proximity to major government agencies was a big reason for building there. In closing the data center, Harris will exit the cloud computing market completely, focusing on situations where it builds dedicated infrastructure for its customers.
"[The closure will] allow us to refocus our capital and efforts on the secure, cost-effective communications and IT solutions that our customers are demanding," read a statement from Harris CEO William M. Brown.
Harris isn't the only outfit that has built a data center in the D.C. area in an effort to bring cloud services to government agencies. Amazon operates facilities in the area, and last September, Microsoft announced it would build a facility in Boydton, Virginia -- just south of Harrisonburg -- to support its Azure cloud service.
