ColoGuard: Connecting Brooklyn, Investing in Brooklyn
When founding, constructing, and growing a business—any kind of business—you need support from a range of sources, be they wholesalers, distributors, office management platforms, maintenance workers, and perhaps dozens more. In this day and age, internet connectivity and a generally strong tech support foundation are as paramount to a business’s day-to-day operations as anything else. Fortunately, if your company is in Brooklyn, you can consider yourself covered in that area.
With two gigantic telecommunications hubs, measuring a combined 50,000 square feet and located in Industry City, ColoGuard is the borough’s centralized, full-service data center and IT support system—the only one of its kind. In partnering with more than 20 of the top internet carriers, like AT&T, Verizon, and others, ColoGuard is as dynamic as it is reliable, providing telecommunications and tech solutions for a wide range of businesses.
“We are a one-stop shopping destination for any business that needs anything tech related,” says co-founder Ruben Magurdumov, ColoGuard’s COO. “If a company is looking for a secure and resilient place to house their servers, our data center can provide a solution for them; if they need someone to manage servers in their office, our team can handle that too.”
Founded in 2003 by Magurdumov and its CEO Ray Sidler, ColoGuard cares about Brooklyn businesses because it is a Brooklyn business—and a self-funded one at that. The two boyhood friends from the New York area built ColoGuard up from out of its first data center: a 100-square-foot space in a building sub basement on Vanderbilt Avenue in Flatbush.
“Operating in such a small footprint provided many challenges,” says Sidler. “But we were able to acquire new customers and grow the business from there, and by 2007 we were ready to move into Industry City.”
ColoGuard redeveloped the eight and ninth floors of Building 10 at Industry City, turning it into a 50,000-square-foot, scalable and customizable data center with locking cabinets, cages, and private suites. The move also placed them among the earliest Industry City technology partners—six years before the joint venture of Jamestown, Belvedere Capital and Angelo, Gordon & Co. famously bought the complex.
“Part of the reason that we came to Industry City is the robust infrastructure within the complex. It facilitated our rapid growth, which allowed us to become the largest data center and technology firm in Brooklyn,” says Mgurdumov. “ColoGuard is currently connected to 6.5 million square feet of prime real estate via dark fiber.”
As Industry City grew with the real estate consortium’s investment, so did ColoGuard. By 2015, ColoGuard expanded into another 35,000-square-foot space in the complex and more recently reached an agreement with building management to manage all of Industry City’s internet service providers and offer onsite IT support to all of its tenants.
“We’re now the most connected office campus anywhere in the U.S., with the most diverse, robust choice of telecom carriers,” says Jay Bedovoy, ColoGuard’s CTO. “Most office complexes will not have an on-premise data center, over 20 internet service providers and onsite tech support all within the same complex.”
In addressing disaster relief concerns, ColoGuard also runs a data center in Jersey City, New Jersey, where clients can back up their data to a separate location. ColoGuard also boasts a presence in London, Hong Kong, and Singapore.
But it all began with two friends in Brooklyn.
“Our operation started out in Brooklyn, always was in Brooklyn. We felt that Brooklyn always had the most potential,” says Sidler.
And with the borough’s booming tech presence, according to Sidler that will continue to be the case for ColoGuard.
“Brooklyn is the New York’s next tech hub,” he says. “We’re excited to be here, to be at Industry City, and wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.”
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