Monsanto Company Completes $21 Million Data Center

CREVE COEUR, Mo., Sept. 10 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Monsanto Company today announced it has completed construction of a new data center on the west side of its World Headquarters campus in Creve Coeur, Mo. The $21 million, 40,000 square-foot building will provide for the company's growing global data and computation needs. The new center houses Monsanto's vast computing network that supports areas of the business 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," said Mark Showers, chief information officer for Monsanto. "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."

Construction of the building began early in 2006. Monsanto anticipates receiving Leadership in Energy Efficient Design (LEED) certification for the building in spring of 2008, making it the first LEED certified data center in the state of Missouri, and the third LEED certified data center in the country. In addition to the efficient design, the center was built with considerable strength and security: the building is capable of withstanding a tornado producing up to 200 mile-per-hour winds and an earthquake measuring up to 5.0 on the Richter scale.

The company retained the services of Fox Architects to design the facility, with William Tao & Associates as the lead engineering firm.

For more information on the data center, please visit http://www.monsanto.com/datacenter

Monsanto Company is a leading global provider of technology-based solutions and agricultural products that improve farm productivity and food quality. For more information on Monsanto, see: http://www.monsanto.com/