Jason Sandford
Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.
Here’s an excellent piece in Data Center Management Magazine, by Asheville writer Marty Weil, about the concrete impact that the Google Fiber Challenge project would have on Asheville if Google decided to come here.
Everyone’s still waiting for Google to make an announcement. Meantime, read this story and dream about what it could mean to Asheville.
David Hawthorne, systems support technician at Asheville-based Festiva Hospitality Group’s corporate data center, says that an immediate effect for the winning community—and a key benefit for businesses within the community—will be a lower cost of doing business.
“If Asheville were selected as the Google fiber site, it would lower a lot of the costs associated with operating a business out of this town,” he says. “We’ve got 80 mg fiber coming here, and that is not cheap. With the Google fiber exceeding those speeds to every single house and business in Asheville, it’s going to make it attractive for a lot of businesses to establish an office here, and to look at the city in a different light. As more businesses locate here, data centers will benefit.”
Cloud computing is one of the specific areas Hawthorne sees benefitting from the Google project. “A multitude of surveys are being done and results are split as to whether cloud computing is the soup du jour or something that will stay for the long term,” he says. “With the Google initiative, there will be a lot more willingness to test some of these emerging technologies.”
Hawthorne contends that larger businesses are restricted in their ability to adopt new technologies because they lack the flexibility of smaller businesses. Google fiber will change that.
