• February 10, 2010
• Articles
• Joy Milkowski

Recently, NEF had the opportunity to tour Markley Group's Boston facility at One Summer Street.  We were so impressed with the attention to detail, overall site features, and technology that we wanted to share the highlights – starting with the fact that One Summer Street supports the 32nd fastest super computer in the world for a major educational institution.
 
With a focus and understanding on what space would yield the best operations, Markley has created the preeminent facilities for each city they have entered.  Specifically, One Summer Street was selected for its strategic location that serves all of the major fiber loops in the Boston area plus its ideal construction of masonry block, steel frame and poured concrete floors.
 
Markley has invested over $100 million to make One Summer Street the most significant telecommunications/data center in the entire New England region.  The facility is home to over 150 enterprise data center customers and 40 domestic and international carriers such as Comcast, Qwest, France Telecom and Level (3).    One Summer Street is a carrier neutral facility so tenants have the ability to select and freely connect to any fiber network provider that has space in the building.  This competitive landscape for transit business is a huge benefit for the tenants.
 
In addition to the strategic attributes of One Summer Street, the physical building was designed and built with the highest standards in mind.  The 800,000 square foot facility has a 2.5 acre footprint with six diverse fiber entrances spread throughout the building.  It also has secure, underground loading facilities that are available 24×7 and capable of accommodating 18-wheel trucks.
 
Just as impressive as the physical attributes are the pains that Markley Group has taken to provide best in class electrical power.  One Summer Street has eight primary power feeders with two diverse entrances and network architecture that eliminates the single point failure commonly found in radial feeders.  These feeder routes are completely underground which removes weather and traffic-related disruptions that are so often associated with suburban distribution.  The facility has not experienced a power outage in over nine years according NSTAR records.
 
One Summer Street was designed to handle any electrical failures by installing very well-conceived redundancies within its UPS/Generator Power system.  The building has 22 generators with 88,000 gallons of fuel onsite as well as both static battery and rotary flywheel UPS and generator systems to accommodate customer preferences. Customers can also choose advanced back-up systems to provide additional power if an outage occurs, ensuring even greater redundancy.
 
For optimal cooling, the typical computer room air conditioning (CRAC) units are dual fed from two different generator-backed switchboards and are nominal 30 ton down flow units. Markley also boasts a 5,000 square foot suite built for high density (up to 38kW per rack) utilizing APC In RowTM Cooling.
 
Never one to rest on their laurels, Markley Group is building a state-of-the-art Network Operations Center (NOC) for infrastructure and customer network monitoring. As if all of this wasn't impressive enough, One Summer Street is New England's only carrier class, mission critical facility with over 40 separate and distinct networks delivering fiber.  In fact, One Summer Street's well-designed attributes are so impressive that some carriers have abandoned their own suburban buildings for the reliability of the infrastructure provided by Markley's One Summer Street. For more information on One Summer Street and how you can benefit from this premier facility, talk with us today.