'Private cloud' will handle Hennepin County's public information

Twelve-year-old Atomic Data, a fixture of the Minneapolis Warehouse District, just expanded into downtown's Marquette Plaza building.

Atomic, a "private cloud" data storage and managed-services firm, recently struck a $1.3 million, seven-year contract with Hennepin County to host the county's online content management and search-engine functions.

The company, which acquired the basement data center in the Marquette Plaza from departed XO Communications, has grown from 32 employees and $6 million in revenue in 2010 to an expected 84 employees and $17.9 million in revenue this year. Jim Wolford is CEO and the largest of three owners.

Q: Why did you start Atomic Data in 2001?

A: My partner, Larry Patterson, our chief technology officer, and I knew the future was in centralized data center computing and that there was no major player in the Midwest ready to handle what was going to come through "the cloud."

We also knew the market needed deep, managed services wrapped with these new data centers. So we started Atomic Data to address these needs.

The recession of 2008-09 was the best thing that happened to the managed-cloud industry. The cloud is kind of like mainframe computers. You buy storage and computing services. A lot of chief financial officers and chief technology officers of organizations looked at the price of [owning computer storage], and most servers are used only about 18 percent of the time. They save money because we only charge for what you use. We're local and very secure.

A: Our private cloud offering means that our systems are completely secure, housed in our 10 facilities around the world, and that we know exactly where our client's data is at all times. The resources in our server farms are guaranteed to support what we sell our clients.

We do not allow ­customers to eat into other customers' resources. Many of the public cloud providers do not guarantee the resources to their clients and their infrastructure does not keep each client completely separated from each other.

Q: Atomic will host the website for Hennepin County services, everything from property information searches to job postings to park and construction maps, the library system and household waste. Hennepin County provides the data. You're the invisible back-end operator and data guardian. How did you win the business?

A: We are providing a secure, private, cloud platform to host their applications. The No. 1 selling point was security — our SOC3- certified cloud-based facilities and our 24/7 Network Operations Center monitoring services.

Q: Where are your data centers?

Q: Your local clients include … ?

A: Medica, Dairy Queen, Great Clips, Periscope, Girl Scouts, Canterbury Park, Verifications Inc. and others.

Q: Who is your competition?

A: Nationally we compete with Rackspace, Amazon and Microsoft. Local competition includes Visi, ipHouse, Virteva, Agosto, Loffler, Warner Connect and more.

Q: What's driving your growth and is there a danger to growing too fast?

We control how much new business we bring in each month so we can continue to deliver the same high quality to each and every client.

We're expanding here, by taking over the data center in Marquette Plaza from XO Communications. We're becoming the facility manager [in addition to adding an office and people]. We like the Warehouse District and downtown. Our people like the area, transit options, the activity and the atmosphere.

Q: What's the future for Atomic Data?

A: We have a three-year plan to get to $50 million [in revenue] with our current 10-facility offering.

We have several strategic relationships that offer another 20 facilities to us to offer future clients. Those relationships are also bringing Atomic Data into their existing relationship to sell our managed services offering and our 24/7 Network Operations Center.