A Mississippi State University center will soon have more space and capacity with the opening of a new facility next month.
The National Strategic Planning and Analysis Research Center (NSPARC) announced its new facility in the Thad Cochran Research Technology and Economic Development Park will hold its grand opening April 20. The facility has been in the works since 2016, and will drastically increase NSPARC’s capacity.
“We use data science to help drive human progress,” said NSPARC Communication Manager Laura McPhail. That’s our mission statement. This new data center is going to help us in ways that we didn’t have the capacity to before, and it’s going to open up a lot of opportunity for expanding our mission and working with new clients and new entities and new state agencies, and really harnessing the power of data to help improve quality of life for people.”
The new 3,300-square-foot center will increase NSPARC's data capacity to 400 terabytes, a 100 percent increase from the current capacity, a 230 percent increase in CPUR capacity, a 256 percent increase in processor memory capacity and a 500 percent increase in storage space for colocation hosting capacity. The new facility will also more than double the center’s IT equipment capacity and increase physical space for the equipment by nearly 275 percent.
”It’s quite an upgrade,” McPhail said. “First of all, we didn’t have a free-standing facility before. Our servers were co-located with other servers. Now this building is here, it’s on site. It’s part of the university. It’s part of NSPARC. We have that, and it’s right here.”
She also said the facility would give NSPARC more room to grow.
Because it’s such a bigger facility, and it’s all our own stuff, we have much higher capacity for expanding the number of servers that are in there, the amount of data we can process and the number of projects we can work on.”
The new facility will operate in addition to NSPARC’s current offices located at The Mill Conference Center.
McPhail also discussed some of NSPARC’s work with the state creating the Mississippi Works app, which connects Mississippians looking for employment with job opportunities and requirements in the state.
The grand opening will start at 1:30 p.m. at the new facility located at 100 Innovation Drive. In the spirit of Super Bulldog Weekend, a tailgate-themed reception will follow. Tours will be offered following the ribbon cutting.