Peoples Natural Gas selects Ascent Data for Establishment
of its critical IT Infrastructure

Pittsburgh, PA, July 7, 2010

Pittsburgh – Ascent Data was recently selected by Peoples Natural Gas Company LLC to host their IT development environment. Peoples made their decision after conducting a thorough evaluation of SAS 70 Type II data centers in the Pittsburgh area.

The new Peoples was created in February when SteelRiver Infrastructure Partners of San Francisco bought the gas distribution company from Dominion Resources. Peoples serves 359,000 customers in sixteen counties in southwestern PA and is part of PNG Companies, LLC, and a subsidiary of SteelRiver Infrastructure Fund North America LP.

Upon separating from Dominion's IT infrastructure, Peoples carefully weighed their options to build a complete IT infrastructure of their own. They selected Ascent Data as their colocation partner at least through the development period, until they have their headquarters built out. In addition to colocation, Ascent Data will provide key managed services to assist in the development, maintenance and support of Peoples' mission critical IT infrastructure.

Ascent Data will be working closely with Peoples' IT group to provide a dedicated VM environment, data backup and storage, along with a variety of managed services at its data center in RIDC Park North, near Fox Chapel. "Like many enterprises, Peoples is able to take advantage of the Ascent Data technical skills team to build a virtualized and private cloud infrastructure in a fraction of the time and at a competitive cost," said Craig Drinkhall, Senior VP of Business and Product Development at Ascent Data.

"Working with local service providers is a priority for Peoples. Ascent Data really made sense for us right now. The data center is secure and resilient, with the cooling, power and space that we require for a quick startup. The senior technical staff is there 24x7. In fact, when we moved our equipment into the facility they were helpful with everything from racking the servers to troubleshooting network problems, and none of them left until we did at 4:00 a.m. Everyone was very knowledgeable and a pleasure to work with," said Kevin Turkovich, Senior Manager of IT at Peoples.

About Ascent Data
Ascent Data provides data center colocation, managed hosting, maintenance services, and business continuity solutions in a secure, resilient, state-of-the-art SAS 70 Type II compliant data center in Pittsburgh, PA. By outsourcing your applications and infrastructure to Ascent Data, you can dramatically improve operational efficiencies and reduce your business risk, as well as free up your human and financial resources to focus on your core business. For more information, please contact our sales team at sales@ascentdata.com or 866.866.6100.