CityNAP

Until CityNAP, San Antonio had no carrier-neutral network access point: no single site where carriers interconnect and a business can colocate its equipment and choose among them.

The building Frank Robles found was in severe disrepair. Inside it was a secured floor that had originally been fitted out as a telco central office. The expensive part of a network facility, the secured space built for carrier equipment, already existed. Everything around it had to be brought back.

Frank founded CityNAP in June 2005 and led it as president and managing partner through 2008. He turned the old central office floor into San Antonio's first carrier-neutral network access point and colocation center: one site where carriers interconnect and customers pick the carrier, rather than the building picking it for them.

CityNAP ran on 100 percent renewable power through CPS Energy's Windtricity program. It was Texas's first 100 percent green data center, the second in the United States, and an EPA Green Power Partner.

CityNAP had a co-marketing agreement with CPS Energy, San Antonio's utility. CityNAP ran on 100 percent renewable power through Windtricity, and CPS promoted CityNAP in its advertising. A start-up data center got a utility's marketing budget working for it; the utility got a working example of what its renewable program could power. The launch and the green designation were announced through PRNewswire, and FastCompany covered CityNAP in its May 2008 look at data centers and NAPs.

• Site selection with an eye for what already exists. A building other people passed on held the most expensive part of the facility, ready to be reused.
• Carrier neutrality as a business model. How to design a facility that carriers want to join and customers want to be in, because nobody is locked to one provider.
• Power as a strategy, not a utility bill. Renewable supply secured in 2005, long before data center power and sustainability were board-level questions.
• Partnerships with a utility that paid off in marketing as well as electricity.