Iowa and North Carolina are emerging as affordable markets for data center development, according to The Boyd Company of Princeton, N.J., which has issued its 2008 ranking of the most affordable sites to operate a data center in the U.S. 

The Boyd Company, 2008

Iowa has a lot to offer organizations building a new data center, said Drue Reeves, vice president and research director at the Burton Group, an IT consulting firm. Among Iowa's virtues are:

• Cheap land. Google Inc. bought 1,185 acres at this location and an option to purchase several more acres south of Council Bluffs. It has plenty of room to expand at a fraction of the cost of purchasing land in the San Francisco Bay area.
• Plenty of reliable electricity.
• Relative safety from natural disasters. While it's true that there's a threat of tornados and floods, Google's location is not in the 100-year flood plane and a direct hit from a tornado is unlikely. Also, Council Bluffs is an unlikely terrorist target.
• A large, college-educated population. Nearby Omaha, Neb., has a population over of 400,000 and over 850,000 live in the greater metropolitan area, with several universities.