('’)
Share

Sept. 11, 2008 - Monsanto has announced that the new datacenter at its world headquarters in Missouri is now one of just a handful of computing facilities to achieve LEED green building certification in the U.S.

The $21 million, 40,000 square foot datacenter houses the company's entire computing network, which supports everything from analyzing data collected for molecular breeding to processing a customer's seed order information.

"The datacenter was designed and constructed to allow natural lighting into a very secure and redundant facility, which efficiently cools and powers Monsanto's global computing environment," says Bob Koogler, the company's head of global infrastructure.

In addition to its energy efficient design, the facility has been built to withstand nearly anything nature throws at it: The building is capable of enduring a tornado producing up to 200 mile-per-hour winds and an earthquake measuring up to 5.0 on the Richter scale, according to Monsanto.

According to Data Center Knowledge, Monsanto's facility is only the fifth the achieve LEED certification in the U.S. Just last year, Digital Realty Trust earned the first-ever LEED Gold certification of a datacenter facility.

To watch the building of the Monsanto datacenter from spring 2006 to August 2007 (all in under a minute and a half!), click here.