OFFICIALS SAY work is moving ahead as scheduled on a multimillion-dollar project that will house the state of Mississippi’s nervous system for the next century or so.

Last year, construction began on two facilities on the Northside that will serve as the new headquarters for Mississippi Information Technology Services (ITS).

The buildings, which can be seen by motorists passing by on Lakeland Drive, are expected to be finished by October. “The buildings are 60 percent complete,” said ITS spokeswoman Michele Blocker. She said weather hasn’t been much of a factor in the building of the $27.5 million facilities.

The first building, one that will be set aside for ITS employees, will be 46,000 square feet and three stories tall. The second, which will serve as the state’s data center, will be a little smaller. It will be two stories and about 28,000 square feet. Each building is expected to be completed within a week of each other, Blocker said.

ITS provides information technology services to state agencies and institutions of higher learning. It will be located near Mississippi Public Broadcasting (MPB) on Ridgewood Road. Employees will have access to the facilities from Ridgewood and Eastover Drive, she said.



THE STRUCTURES will provide the agency with a needed upgrade from the historic Robert E. Lee Building, a former hotel that caught fire when it was being renovated for the technology department. Even with the move, Blocker said ITS won’t be leaving the former hotel altogether.

“We hope to maintain the current data center in the Lee Building for additional backup and redundancy purposes,” she explained in a recent e-mail. Future decisions regarding the building will be made by the state legislature.

During the 2009 legislative session, state lawmakers would not consider passing a bill that would privatize the facility and put it back on the capital city’s tax rolls.

According to information provided by the department, ITS provides the state with a number of services. The most common are offering a 24-hour operations center, hardware and software monitoring, automation services, data backup and recovery, billing, and disaster recovery.

Other services include database management, mail hosting and relay, virus protection, software maintenance and support, consulting, and application troubleshooting. Many of the services can be provided on-location or by remote, from ITS headquarters.

The facilities are being built to last up to 100 years, with things like electrical equipment and wiring being updated every 20 to 30 years. They will also offer the state addiitional room to expand.

“There is some growth planned for additional employees,” she said. “We expect a higher need for growth in the data center environment,” which will provide more than double the capacity of the current center downtown.