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If you’ve been assigned to research Phoenix Data Centers for your company, you may be wondering how this unique industry got its start. As with most computer-related industries, the history only goes back a half century or so.

In the early days, computers were monstrous systems, complicated in both design and operation. The processing available in a simple laptop would have taken several rooms, if not an entire complex. This required any company with computer equipment to build large rooms, capable of housing the machine as well as all the cables and power cords necessary to keep them running. Special cooling and fire protection systems were also needed to ensure the optimum operating environment. Special racks and cable trays were developed to organize these rooms.

As computers grew smaller and the age of the microcomputer took hold in the 1980s, companies converted their computer rooms into server rooms or data centers. They were able to set up hierarchical systems to serve the individual terminals used by workers at their desks and cubicles

The late 1990s brought the dot com revolution. Internet startups required massive computing power and connectivity, but did not want to build their own in house data centers. Internet Data Centers, or IDCs, began to spring up, offering these new companies not only state of the art equipment, but also ready-made connectivity to power, telecommunications, and internet network providers. Eventually the I in IDC was dropped and today companies of all sorts are using data center services.