Nevada based Cobalt Data Centers is differentiating its product by humanizing its data centers and making them more geek friendly, in a bid to attract more customers to its facilities.

The Las Vegas facility has augmented its 34,000 square foot facility and supporting offices with ‘soft features’ not normally found on the specification sheet of a data center customer. These include a fully stocked kitchen, outdoor patio, restrooms, showers and a common area with TVs and video games for clients to use.

These are the important service differentiators for the modern data center, according to Cobalt president Jefferson Brown, who said focus groups now stress the importance of being people-friendly.

“This is going to be something that differentiates us from how our business is characterized,” he said. “In the past — and this is not just Cobalt but data centers in general — we’ve set aside the people element of operating a data center. We are trying to develop a people piece to our business. Culturally, we need to stop thinking of it as only powering and cooling computers.”

This – and its recent certification by the Nevada Gaming Commission and Gaming Control Board – has made Cobalt a top data center brand with creative industries, according to the Las Vegas Business Press.

Smaller data centers, such as Cobalt’s, are becoming more popular, according to Brown.

“With some of the big players in this industry, there are buildings 300,000 to 500,000 square feet. There is a lot of inefficiency and hassle for clients,” Brown said. “After you park your car and go through security, you’ve walked half a mile just to get to your computer to do your work. If you need to go to bathroom, you have to walk a quarter mile. There is a pressure to create economic leverage by building them so big they become dysfunctional and impractical to the people side of the business.”

Another focus group study reported that technicians complained about the lack of visibility in gloomy data centers, so Cobalt painted the interior bright white with energy-efficient lights which only turn on when someone enters the room.

“Anyone who works in most data centers for a length of time has to wear a headlamp because it’s dark in there. You walk into mine and it looks like a bright, white hospital,” said Brown.