“Of all of these cities, we have the lowest vacancy rates in our data centers,” he says, below five percent. And the growing use of computerized medical records, cloud computing and other factors has caused projections for “the demand curve for data centers to just go out of control.”

And that increased activity is occurring nationwide. As recently reported in GlobeSt.com, in the past 18 months, developers completed more than 1.5-million-square-feet of new data center space in the northern New Jersey market, and seem poised to build even more.

CNA briefly considered holding onto its building and renting out the excess space, Gerber adds. “That was an exercise we went through with CNA when we were brought on, but the idea was quickly dismissed since CNA decided 'this is not what we do, running a data center is not our core business.'”

By selling the centers, corporations monetize these assets, and ensure the excess capacity gets rented out and administered by true professionals.

“We took the building out to the market and ended up with four solid prospective buyers,” says Gerber, which he considers a sign of strong interest.

The insurer plans to continue leasing a smaller space at the Aurora center for its data needs, so it did not necessarily consider the highest bidder the most attractive, he adds. “BYTEGRID represented the right mix of a good price and a lot of expertise as an owner-operator.”

“CNA wanted to recoup their expenses, which it did, and it can now avoid the capital requirement, a very expensive one, of maintaining a data center.”

Gerber believes this particular niche has developed enough to begin attracting interest from REITs, which may eventually purchase portfolios of data centers from the operators that bought them from the original corporate users. So far, however, this has not been done.

But whatever the future holds, he says, “right now, if you have a new data center with excess capacity, there are operators out there looking to buy.”