Technology

Why is Kansas City, Missouri, a great location for IT businesses and data centers?

Kansas City has a world-class telecommunications infrastructure and is a point of convergence for transcontinental fiber and related communications networks. The Kansas City metro is home to Sprint’s world headquarters, and Sprint has deployed a set of four MAN (Major Area Network) rings throughout the Kansas City area, an architecture designed to provide self-healing capabilities during fiber cuts and electronic outages.

The city’s state-of-the-art technology landscape also includes 1102 GRAND, a carrier hotel located in a 26-story landmark building in the heart of downtown.1102 GRAND is the largest carrier neutral facility in the Kansas City Metro area and one of the fastest growing of its kind in the Midwest, and its success is a testament to Kansas City’s robust telecommunications infrastructure and reputation for reliability.

IT talent pool

Kansas City, Missouri, is at the center of a metro area with a labor force of more than 1 million, and 32% of the metro area population has a four-year degree – 5% higher than the national average. In addition, Kansas City has a solid base of employees with IT experience and training:

The IT workforce in the Kansas City area numbers more than 34,000, with a high concentration of IT professionals working in financial services, telecommunications, data processing, software and engineering.

Kansas City area universities and community colleges produce more than 1,000 IT graduates each year.

Fifteen institutions in the area offer bachelor’s degrees in computer and information sciences (about 430 graduates each year), and the University of Missouri-Kansas City and the University of Kansas also offer graduate degrees.

Computing-related engineering programs in the Kansas City area award about 130 bachelor’s degrees each year and twice that many associate’s degrees.

The IT recruitment pool also includes recent graduates from major universities in a multi-state region.