Mayo Clinic Sells Data Center to Epic in Sale-Leaseback Deal

The Rochester, Minn.-based Mayo Clinic is selling its data center to the Verona, Wisc.-based Epic Systems in a sale-leaseback deal for $46 million, according to a report in the Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal.

A sale-leaseback is a transaction in which the owner of a property sells an asset and then leases it back from the buyer. Here, Mayo will lease the 62,000-square-foot data center, based in Rochester, from Epic for at least four years, with an option to continue the deal forever, according to the report.

According to another report in the Rochester-based Post-Bulletin, Cris Ross, ‎CIO at Mayo Clinic, said, regarding the deal, "Today we're only occupying a small portion of that space. We built it out to meet future needs. We can continue with all of the equipment we have there today, plus there is room for them to bring in their own equipment." Ross estimated that Mayo Clinic has only seven or eight employees working there.

Meanwhile, per the Post-Bulletin, story, Epic spokeswoman Dana Apfel said the Rochester data center is a good fit for Epic's needs. "Epic needed a high-quality disaster recovery data center that was some distance away from its production data center, yet still close enough to get to easily," she wrote in an email response. "Mayo had a high-quality data center in an excellent location that was too large for their needs,” she said.

Earlier this year, Mayo Clinic selected Epic to replace its existing electronic health record (EHR) and revenue cycle technology. While Mayo Clinic's primary records will be stored at Epic's Verona campus, backups of the files will be stored in the Rochester data center. Epic also plans to store backups for other clients there, the report said.