Cleveland welcomes growing field of server farms

CLEVELAND (AP) — Northeast Ohio is hardly ready to usurp the Silicon Valley as a high-tech mecca, but a growing number of data centers are locating in and around Cleveland. They're taking advantage of cheap power, an abundance of fiber-optic cable and one of the safest environments in the country for storing digital information.

It's ironic that a Rust Belt city like Cleveland is so well-suited to the Internet age. The superhighways of the late 19th and early 20th centuries — rail lines — have proved to be the ideal conduit for routing fiber-optic cable.

And one of Cleveland's biggest attractions is its low cost of electricity. One data center executive says power can cost 13 to 16 cents per kilowatt in the Northwestern U.S. but only 5 or 6 cents in Cleveland.