PM Network - December 2014

Infrastructure Group is developing Reno Technology Park (RTP), a 2,200-acre (890-hectare) site 15 miles ( 24 kilometers) east of the city, into a data center conglomerate. Securing Apple as RTP’s first company was a critical step in getting other high-tech companies to set their sights on Reno. “When a company like Apple does due diligence on a site, it’s essentially vetted it for everyone else in the business,” says Steve Rosa, principal, Unique Infrastructure Group, Reno.

Apple currently occupies just 345 acres (140 hectares) of the park. The first phase of the project included a 20,000-square-foot ( 1,858-square-meter) rapid deployment data center module. The company continues to green-light construction of additional facilities.

RTP’s location is hard to beat: The Interstate 80 highway corridor, which runs directly through Reno, is considered the fiber backbone of the northern United States. “Reno sits along the data superhighway between Silicon Valley and New York City,” Mr. Rosa says.

Unique Infrastructure Group is now courting additional companies to build data centers in RTP; Mr.

Rosa believes a custom-built water-cooling system, along with deregulated power prices and renewable energy options, will attract interest in the park. (Water is often used to cool data centers’ computer systems, which generate a lot of heat.) The increase in construction projects would be a boon for project managers, but even after data centers go live, project management talent will be needed for upgrade projects. “Data centers are not static systems,” says Mr. Rosa. “They refresh their technology on a two-or three-year cycle to adapt to changing standards and advances in facility designs.”

Help Wanted

The uptick in tech projects is already beginning to increase job opportunities for project managers in the area. “We saw a contraction in the market after 2008, but companies are starting to hire again,” says Tracy Sharp, PMP, project manager, Sharp Technology Solutions Corp., Reno.

Now, the mood is hopeful. “We’re seeing new companies move in and existing ones expand,” says Eric Baryol, PMP, managing principal, Leverage IT Consulting, Reno. That’s meant more projects for his company. In 2013, Reno-based sales training company Miller Heiman hired Leverage IT to get a customer relations management software installation project that was behind schedule back on track.

“We came in and created a schedule and started controlling it with a weekly timeline and project processes,” Mr. Baryol says.

Soon after, Miller Heiman called his team back in for a phase-two project, which prepared the software system to be used by several newly acquired companies and was completed in February. “The opportunities for project managers in Reno are not singular,” Mr. Baryol says. —Kate Sykes

SECURITY
SPENDING
SOARS

Organizations are spending big to keep data-security threats at bay. Worldwide, information security spending will hit US$71 billion this year, according to Gartner. That’s a 7. 9 percent increase over 2013—and a rise that’s expected to continue in 2015.

As social, mobile and cloud computing become more common, organizations are growing more aware of the security threats each poses— and funding projects to strengthen infrastructure and cover vulnerabilities.

Security is no longer seen as just an IT function or a cost center, research director Lawrence Pingree pointed out in the report.

In this new security landscape, the answer isn’t simply more spending: Organizations are moving resources out of security device administration and monitoring, and into mitigation and incident response. In 2015, it’s predicted that roughly

10 percent of IT security enterprise capabilities will be delivered as a cloud service. By 2018, Gartner predicts more than half of organizations will rely on security services firms that specialize in data protection, risk and infrastructure management. —M. Wright

Tesla Motors announced it would spend US$5 billion to build a “gigafactory” just outside of Reno that will manufacture lithium ion batteries and employ 6,500 people.