GeoLearning Inc. is planning a $6 million expansion over the next three years, and the company expects to decide within a week whether part of that investment will be made in Iowa or in another state.

As part of its expansion, the West Des Moines-based e-learning and training company will add a new data center this year. According to Frank Russell, GeoLearning’s president and CEO, Altoona is among the three locations under consideration for that center, along with cities in Texas and Virginia.

GeoLearning has applied for financial assistance from the city of West Des Moines and the state of Iowa, and is also applying for assistance from the other two states. Iowa’s pending assistance package would be in the form of a Community Economic Betterment Account grant. The state’s portion would be about $200,000 and the city’s would be $40,000.

Russell said the final decision on where to put the new center won’t be based solely on which state offers the most money.

“When you are going to spend this much money and hire as many people as we expect to do in the next few years, having the right kind of facility and the right location is ultimately going to decide this for us,” Russell said.

The new data center is intended to support GeoLearning’s new version of its GeoMaestro learning management technology, which is being released this month. Russell said his company invested about 2 1/2 years and $5 million to develop the product, and now needs additional infrastructure to support it. GeoLearning currently operates data centers in Ottawa, Canada, and the Washington, D.C. area.

Russell said GeoLearning’s expansion will include about 100 new servers and other equipment for the data center, along with about 80 new employees. The new hires will include technical people to support the data center, but also other jobs companywide, such as programmers and call center personnel. GeoLearning currently employs about 200 full-time equivalent employees worldwide, and of those, about 160 are based at the company’s headquarters.

If GeoLearning chooses Altoona for the new data center, the company would utilize available space at the Edge Business Continuity Center, a disaster recovery and business center that opened last fall. Russell sees some advantages to partnering with the EBCC.

“Because we have our headquarters office in West Des Moines, it could be an advantage having the data center nearby, instead of having to take our customers to another city to show them that infrastructure,” Russell said. “And Iowa is a nice place to expand because of its lower cost of living and the great work ethic people have here.”

Previously, GeoLearning has not considered a local data center because of security requirements   the company has with some of its   clients, particularly ones in the   government sector.

“The federal government has strict security standards, and the Edge facility meets the requirements that we have,” Russell said.

Early comparisons of the three cities show that Iowa and Texas would be about the same in terms of cost for the data center, with Virginia being more expensive. Russell said the process of applying for assistance has slowed down planning, and he is eager to proceed with leasing space for the data center and purchasing the necessary equipment.

“We know what we are going to do, and we have everything spec’d out,” Russell said. “It’s just a matter of pulling the trigger to move forward.”

This is the first time in GeoLearning’s 10-year history that it has sought financial assistance, and Russell is still deciding if it would be a good option.

“We are going back and forth on the assistance, and honestly, I might not proceed with it if there are too many strings attached,” he said. r