Henrico data center company serves a diverse clientele
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Johnson who is now retired. Photo by Rick DeBerry
Henrico County-based GreyGate LLC serves a growing demand for customized data centers in the U.S. and overseas.
“We figure out exactly what the client has and what their needs are today,” says Stuart Carter, who founded the company in 2002 with Russ Johnson, who is now retired. “We give them scalable solutions that they can add on to when needed.”
In addition to designing and building data centers, GreyGate provides engineering services, service contracts, emergency service and maintenance. It partners with APC by Schneider Electric, which builds uninterruptable power supply systems, to keep clients’ critical operations running 24/7.
“We started working on jobs with them around the Beltway and Washington, D.C., area and the work has taken off from there,” Carter says.
GreyGate’s clients include the Library of Virginia, the College of William & Mary, Virginia Commonwealth University, NASA Langley Research Center, Dominion Energy and WestRock. “We are doing a lot of work with the U.S. Department of Defense and all of the intelligence agencies as well as schools and colleges,” Carter says.
The company’s international clients are based in Europe, the Mideast and Asia. The diverse clientele helps GreyGate maintain a steady revenue when the economy fluctuates.
“We go through periods when the commercial marketplace slows down and the government picks up and vice versa,” Carter says. “We are careful where we spend our time.”
Customer service is a key priority, he adds. “We take a lot of pride in our customer service. We try to learn what the business is, what the priorities are and what the goals are when we work with a client. That helps us determine what level of protection they need in their data processing areas.”
When customers’ wants are bigger than their actual needs, GreyGate’s job is to “make them understand what the cost benefit is as well as the return on investment with the equipment,” Carter says.
The company is always adding and changing services as the business dictates. “We have to change as the computer world changes,” Carter says. “Things are changing so fast now it’s incredible.”
