Switch: The Global Technology Powerhouse You've Never Heard Of

Although one rarely thinks of Las Vegas as a technology powerhouse, a secretive company called Switch is trying to change that as it works to become one of the key global infrastructure components.

Accounts say that Switch was originally built as part of the Enron Empire, and Enron's collapse allowed the purchase of the massive and expensive internet technology behind Swich to be sold at a fraction of original costs, opening the door for investors and Switch's CEO Rob Roy to become a key player - perhaps eventually even *the* key player, in global internet infrastructure.

As cloud computing becomes mainstream computing for many businesses and even several huge enterprise deployments, the critical importantance expands for the huge data centers run by giants like Google, Amazon, Yahoo, Microsoft, and Las Vegas' new kid on the block, Switch.

Ashlee Vance of The Register notes that early secrecy about the project is giving way to the needs of branding switch as the global internet giant it wants to become:

.... drawing undue attention to this facility would go against the military customers' best wishes. There are rooms at the Switch facility that require top secret clearance, preventing even Roy from entering them ...

In the next couple of months, Switch will open a new facility located just a few miles from the McCarran International Airport called the SuperNAP. Roy describes the 407,000 square foot facility as the most energy efficient, tightly packed data center on the planet. He expects it to be filled by the world's most prominent companies, including just about every technology heavyweight you can think of and the major media conglomerates. The SuperNAP monstrosity looks to stand as just a starting point for Switch with the company's investors urging it to build close to 10 similar centers around the globe.