U.S. colocation and wholesale data center provider, H5 Data Centers, has acquired from Intuit Inc. a 240,000 square-foot, purpose-built data center in Quincy, Washington. The acquisition expands H5 Data Centers’ portfolio across the U.S. to 12 data centers and compliments its 300,000 square-foot data center in downtown Seattle.
Intuit Inc. (Nasdaq: INTU) has sold its largest data center as the company advances its IT strategy and continues migrating its services to the public cloud, moving away from investing in owning hosting platforms.
“We chose to move to Amazon Web Services (AWS) to accelerate developer productivity and innovation for our customers, and to accommodate spikes in customer usage through the tax season,” said H. Tayloe Stansbury, Intuit Executive Vice President, and Chief Technology Officer. “Our TurboTax Online customers were served entirely from AWS during the latter part of this tax season, and we expect to finish transitioning QuickBooks Online this year. Now that most of our core applications are in AWS, the time is right to transition the ownership and operation of this data center to a team who will expertly manage the infrastructure through the remainder of this transition.”
Intuit Inc.’s former purpose-built data center is move-in ready and will feature a 24×7 team of facility engineers, remote hands personnel, and security professionals. The on-site data center team would boast an average existing tenure of more than seven years per person. Available immediately, H5 Data Centers can offer high-density colocation deployments in an environment that is claimed to have a track record of 100% uptime since initial commissioning.
“H5 Data Centers is experiencing strong demand for wholesale data center services across the United States and the Quincy data center represents an incredible growth opportunity for us,” said Josh Simms, founder, and CEO of H5 Data Centers. “We welcome a world-class team of data center professionals to our company as we look to immediately expand the critical capacity of the data center to serve the mission-critical needs of leading global enterprises.” Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
Quincy Data Center Highlights
- 63-acre colocation data center campus with an existing 240,000 square-foot building
- Over 40MW of turn-key colocation space at full build-out
- Access to 100% renewable hydropower
- 100% Washington state sales and use tax abatement on data center equipment
- High-density colocation deployments of up to 500 Watts per square foot
“Central Washington has the right combination of power pricing, sales tax incentives, low latency to major peering centers and renewable energy mix to appeal to a very large spectrum of global data center users,” added Mr. Simms. “Local community leaders, public utility providers, and state legislators have helped develop the area into one of the most desirable locations in the world for large data center users.”
Intuit Inc.’s ecosystem of financial management solutions serves partners and 46 million customers worldwide. The company’s global products and platforms, including TurboTax, QuickBooks, Mint, and Turbo, are designed to empower consumers, self-employed, and small businesses to improve their financial lives.
