Oracle facility to employ at least 100 people

WEST JORDAN — A patch of land at 6136 W. 10120 South contains only dirt, but in a couple of years, it will be home to a state-of-the-art data center.

Actually, it will be so state-of-the-art that Oracle Corp. isn't even calling it a data center. The company prefers that the 179,000-square-foot, $285 million facility be known as a "compute center" as the company moves from providing infrastructure and support to a full-service organization using technology to help businesses through service.

Groundbreaking for the Utah Compute Center took place Friday, with Oracle President Safra Catz hinting that employment at the facility eventually could balloon from the initial 100.

"We're putting a lot of money in it and quite a few employees," Catz told a crowd of about 80 people. "What I always find is that every once in a while we'll go somewhere and I'll think we're going to add, you know, 100 employees and before I know it, we've got a thousand... So I expect I'll be here when they're talking about even more space."

Catz said the facility will be a "showcase" for other companies. "As the governor mentioned, many of our customers (will) come here to see how we do it. So there will be customers on customers coming here from around the world — of course, around the country, but around the world — to learn about Utah, to learn why we picked Utah," she said.

Oracle has offices in Salt Lake and Sandy that together employ 200 people. The new facility will have "a multiplier effect in real terms, but also in perception terms, because when people see that you're here, they want to be here, too," Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. told company officials.

Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, was called a great "salesman" for Utah by Catz. He said the Utah Compute Center "is going to be a terrific facility" staffed by a "highly motivated, intelligent" work force.

Oracle had announced in May that it had selected West Jordan for the facility. The state offered the company a tax rebate of more than $15 million, and local government incentives are expected to total nearly $10 million. State documents indicated at the time that the facility would result in $73.6 million in new wages over 10 years and $50.4 million in new state revenue over 12 years.

The company, based in Redwood Shores, Calif., has more than 85,000 employees and 320,000 customers in 145 countries, including 280,000 database customers. The company reported $22.4 billion in revenue during the 2008 fiscal year.

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E-mail: bwallace@desnews.com

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