CenturyLink has opened a new data center in Minneapolis, St Paul, which supports up to 6MW of IT load.

The facility, called MP2, will offer 100,000 sq ft of technical space and a total power capacity of 10MW once fully built.

It has already been certified Tier III for construction by the Uptime Institute and received Gold certification from the US Green Building Institute for its leadership in Energy and environmental design.

CenturyLink SVP and general manager for technology solutions David Meredith said the company expects to attract business from companies in the retail, financial services, healthcare and media sectors.

“We look forward to helping these businesses become more agile, secure and sustainable,” Meredith said.

A key focus will be on the delivery of hybrid cloud solutions, which brings CenturyLink’s colocation, managed hosting and managed services business under one umbrella.

CenturyLink already has customers operating out of Minneapolis, using its MP1 data center.

CenturyLink started building its new data center in Minneapolis in October last year close to the Minneapolis-St Paul airport in Shakopee.

The one-storey data center offers a rack density of 20kW.

Its mechanical set up has been designed  to an N+1 configuration and 2mW dual generators offer back up power supply.

The data center is connected to Centurylink’s global network, which includes 55 data centers in North America, Europe, and Asia.

CenturLink recently announced increased investment for its cloud services, with the expansion of its network of public cloud data centers, which by the end of the first half of 2014 it will have 13 of.

It has also been focussing on growth in the US, opening a 9MW data center in Phoenix in January that uses IO modules.