MontanaSky Networks plans to build a $1.4 million regional data center at the former Vann’s appliance building in Evergreen.

Flathead County plans to apply for a state economic development Community Development Block Grant through the Department of Commerce to cover $400,000 of the cost.

The idea is to offer a new model of service that will allow local businesses affordable access to sophisticated Internet Protocol services without the need to hire full-time system administrators, costly high-speed network connections and dedicated computer servers, according to Tina Oliphant, vice president of finance for Montana West Economic Development.

Montana West is assisting MontanaSky with the grant application for which Flathead County would be the host government agency. A public hearing on the grant application will be at 11 a.m. Monday in the county commissioners’ chambers.

The proposed regional data center would employ 16 full-time technicians, installers and customer specialists and would give new life to a sizable vacant building on U.S. 2 in Evergreen.

MontanaSky has placed an offer on the Vann’s building in anticipation of the project moving forward.

MontanaSky Networks has been a hometown-oriented information technology business since Fred Weber started the company in Eureka in the mid-1990s. The business moved from Eureka to Kalispell in 2002.

Weber is still involved with the company, but Joe Sullivan took the reins as chief executive officer two years ago with a keen focus on perfecting MontanaSky’s customer service.

Traditionally data centers were either built for the sole use of one large company or as fiber hotels for large and regional carriers, Oliphant said.

“Present-day needs for data-center services have exploded with the exponential dependence on the Internet to host platforms for internal and external business operations,” she explained. “These services provide businesses access to intelligent environments, security, redundancy and 24/7 equipment monitoring. Many current-day data centers are run by providers solely for the purpose of hosting multiple customer racks and equipment.

“The challenge for Main Street companies and small businesses is that customers are required to rent a full rack to store their equipment,” Oliphant said. “In some cases, if they have a single server, they may be able to place it in the center, but it will not have the same security and redundancy that a customer renting a full rack is given.”

The data center would allow small businesses better access to trends in technology and give them the option of using the center for either disaster recovery or primary operation of their mission-critical server infrastructure. It also would give companies access to greater broadband and enable them to leverage the center’s bandwidth capacity for their server needs.

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by email at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com.