Monsanto opens $21M data center

St. Louis Business Journal - 11:38 AM CDT Monday, September 10, 2007

Monsanto Co. announced Monday it completed construction of a new $21 million data center at its Creve Coeur headquarters.

The 40,000-square-foot building on the west side of the headquarters campus is home to Monsanto's computing network, which performs everything from analyzing data collected for molecular breeding to processing a customer's seed order information.

"The data center is an integral part of our business, both in delivering high quality products for the farm and for improving the customer experience," Mark Showers, Monsanto's chief information officer, said in a statement. "Every day Monsanto scientists analyze terabytes of data collected from laboratories, field trials, and breeding stations around the world. This requires considerable speed and technology to quickly and accurately process such massive amounts of data into manageable, digestible information that we can use to make important business decisions like which drought-tolerant gene will be advanced to the next phase of the product pipeline."

Monsanto said it anticipates receiving Leadership in Energy Efficient Design (LEED) certification for the building in spring of 2008, which would make it the first LEED certified data center in Missouri, and only the third LEED certified data center in the country.

Construction began in early 2006. Fox Architects designed the facility and William Tao & Associates was the project's lead engineering firm.

St. Louis-based Monsanto Co. (NYSE: MON) develops insect- and herbicide-resistant crops and other agricultural products.