The US Veterans Administration is making upward of US$12 billion in IT contracts available to businesses over the next five years, as part of an effort to modernize its operations. The VA spends about US$3.5 billion annually in IT, a figure that Input, a government market research, estimates is increasing at 10% annually as demand for veterans' services increases, said Kevin Plexico, an analyst at the Reston, Va.-based firm.

A rooftop solar-powered data centre has been connected to Canada’s first “green” powered internet network. On June 29, 2010, Cybera, with national partners CANARIE and the GreenStar Network (GSN) Project, connected the Calgary node, which is managed by Cybera, will draw more than 1,840 watts of power from eight solar panels (230 watts each) installed on roof space donated by Calgary Technologies in the Alastair Ross Technology Centre.

RCN Metro Optical Networks, a division of RCN and a provider of fibre optic-based network solutions, has announced the expansion of its premier colocation facility located at 111 8th Avenue, the most telecom intensive location on the East Coast. RCN Metro added cabinet and power capacity in direct response to continued demand from its customers.

A refrigeration expert whose cool designs for hot-working computer data centres led to significant energy savings for Santa Rosa-based communications services provider Sonic.net now has his design employed in a major Silicon Valley data centre project set to be complete this fall.

Stratacache will launch a US$3.25 million local data centre, marking its second major investment announced this summer. Officials from the Dayton-based software and solutions company, which has about 30 employees at two other sites locally, said it has acquired and outfitted a 10,000 sq ft bunker facility in an undisclosed location in the Dayton metro area. The centre will open in a few weeks.

Jacksonville- based data centre operator Colo5, has signed an agreement with banking and payments technology provider FIS, for outsourced facilities management services. Under the terms of the agreement, FIS will provide Colo5 with facilities management, infrastructure planning, project management, business risk analysis, vendor management and technical services.

FIS helps organisations to be more efficient and effective in all areas of data centre and facilities management, to ensure operational sustainability.

Source: CBR Online

DuPont Fabros Technology, has reported results for the quarter ended June 30, 2010. All per share results are reported on a fully diluted basis. The company said that it has executed eight new triple-net leases and renewed one triple-net lease totalling 17.66 megawatts, representing approximately US$337 million of total contract value over the respective lease terms.

Pent up global demand for massive cloud computing speed and capacity is powering the construction of colossal new data centres, but most are a year or more away from being operational. South Hill Business and Technology Centre, a project of The Benaroya Company along with its hand-picked team of gold-standard experts, is in the final stages of commissioning and will be fully operational and ready for occupancy in the next two weeks.

Data centre operator and colocation provider Continuum Data Centers has announced it has completed the second phase of its Lombard, Illinois data centre. The expansion, which was both physical and infrastructure in nature, adds an additional 14,000 sq ft of usable colocation space to its previous 20,000 sq ft.

Upon opening last August, the data centre signed fibre-optic connectivity provider AboveNet to provide its high-bandwidth transport backbone from its Oak Brook, Illinois POP.

Source: The WHIR

SIMSOL has announced its new primary colocation facility in partnership with tw telecom. SIMSOL selected tw telecom to house its data colocation site in the event the company's primary server site located in Orlando, Florida fails to provide service for any reason.

Image Microsystems, a provider of technology restoration, reverse logistics, e-waste recycling and recycled plastic products manufacturing, has selected SunGard Availability Services to provide colocation services. SunGard will provide colocation services to help Image Microsystems improve information availability and ensure data security without straining internal IT resources.

What's left of Lehman Brothers is asking a bankruptcy court judge for permission to pay US$2.5 million to get out of a 59,300 sq ft data centre lease with 85 Tenth Ave. that extends to the end of 2013. Lehman says without the approval it would pay US$300,000 per month or a total of US$12.485 million for the seventh-floor communications hub that it no longer uses.

Building owner Related has agreed to the early termination, but only if it gets a tenant to fill the space. A CB Richard Ellis team has it on the market and declined comment.

Data centre solutions provider, CoreLink Data Centers, is pleased to announce the launch of their Summer Sizzle Promotion. CoreLink’s summer savings package includes a 25% discount on full cabinet colocation for a one-year term, full locking cabinets with switched and meter PDUs included, fast Ethernet cross connect, 20 Mbps bandwidth and 24x7 support and remote hands.

Juniper Networks announced that Internet Initiative Japan, one of Japan's Internet access and network solutions providers, has adopted Juniper Networks EX Series Ethernet Switches in its data centres to support its newly developed cloud services under the name IIJ GIO.

After bringing The Planet to Houston four years ago, investors are considering moving the company back to Dallas as part of a possible merger with a related Internet hosting company. The company is in talks to merge with Dallas-based SoftLayer, which recently sold a 70% equity stake to the same investors who brought The Planet to Houston, officials for both companies said Thursday.

The J.R. Simplot data centre management team wanted to improve energy efficiency to meet corporate green initiatives. They also wanted to increase IT rack density, be better able to troubleshoot equipment and put in systems to manage potential risks.

This Case Study explores how they installed energy management software and intelligent rack PDUs with outlet-level power monitoring to add remote energy management, power monitoring of individual devices, environmental monitoring, and sophisticated and accurate power usage reports and analytics.

Grubb & Ellis, an advisory firm for commercial real estate, has released its mid-year data centre report for 2010. This report highlights a number of trends, drivers, and other facts relevant to the current data centre market. The report, officially entitled “Grubb & Ellis National Data Center Practice Mid-Year Report,” is available on the web and also at the National Data Center Practice blog.

Source: Data Centre journal

AboveNet, a provider of high-bandwidth connectivity solutions, has announced results for the second quarter and six months ended June 30, 2010.

With a company as spread out as T.D. Williamson, getting a solid tech infrastructure in place is a challenge, says Rick Bennett, chief information officer at the pipeline integrity company. "We're an international company with 57 locations in 37 different countries," he said. "As such, it would be cost-prohibitive to have data centres hosting various applications in every location around the world."

The New York Stock Exchange will open its massive trading data centre in Mahwah, New Jersey before today's opening bell. The exchange group first announced it would be building the data centre last September. Parent company NYSE Euronext says it plans to start trading 19 stocks on servers "matching engines" housed inside the 400,000 sq ft data centre, located along Route 17.

tw telecom, a provider of managed voice, Internet and data networking solutions for business customers, has announced its second quarter 2010 financial results, including US$316.8 million of revenue, US$114.4 million in modified EBITDA, US$15.2 million in levered free cash flow and net income of US$242.3 million, which included the impact of a non-cash income tax benefit of US$227.3 million in the quarter.

Atlantic.Net, a privately held, high-performance managed hosting provider has announced a multi-year partnership agreement with Complete Healthcare Solutions, a medical software solutions company. Under the terms of the agreement, Atlantic.Net will power CHS’ medical software with turnkey managed hosting backed by SAS 70 certified infrastructure.

The State of Florida has announced that it has awarded DSM Technology Consultants the state contract for disaster recovery services. DSM is excited by the opportunity to use its proven disaster recovery methodology and data centre network to provide state, county and local agencies/entities with a broader, more flexible and cost effective range of disaster recovery services.

Faced with unique challenges relating to maintaining and expanding its legacy data centre, NTHP has selected InfoRelay Online Systems, to provide data centre space, high-speed IP connectivity, and direct point-to-point connectivity between its office in Washington, DC and InfoRelay's data centre location in Reston, VA.

Michigan Millers Mutual Insurance Company, a provider of auto, homeowners, business, and agribusiness insurance, has improved their IT disaster recovery capabilities and backup recovery response time by moving from IBM’s facility to Online Tech’s SAS 70 certified data centres.

Major clothing store American Eagle Outfitters suffered an outage late last month, which sources say can be attributed to outsourced managed hosting, despite reportedly well-laid recovery plans for just such a disaster. American Eagle’s online shops, ae.com, aerie.com and 77kids.com, crashed on July 19, and remained offline until July 23, when many of the pages became available, but sluggish, until the afternoon July 27, when the sites were restored to normal.

Google hosted a packed house of clean-tech industry fans yesterday morning at the Googleplex in what amounted to a pep rally against a California ballot proposition that would suspend a law on emissions. November voters are being asked to consider Proposition 23, which if approved would block a previously passed law--AB32--regulating emissions in California until unemployment levels drop below 5.5% for a full year. AB32 essentially requires that California emission levels match the levels specified by the Kyoto Protocol--1990 levels--by 2020, and it's set to begin taking effect in 2012.

Unisys has announced that its Unisys China subsidiary has sold computer hardware, software and services to the company that operates the reservations systems for Chinese airlines in a deal worth US$43 million.

Southern Telecom has extended the reach of its Atlanta local dark fibber network.

Science Applications International Corporation has announced it has been awarded a prime contract by the U.S. Navy's Military Sealift Command, Washington, D.C., to provide data centre, IT, and disaster recovery site support.

The follow-on contract has a one year base period of performance, four one-year options, and a total value of more than US$49 million if all options are exercised. Work will be performed primarily at MSC headquarters at the Washington Navy Yard, and in Norfolk, Virginia, Pensacola, Florida, and San Diego, California.

Data centre operator CoreLink Data Centers has announced it has completed its Phoenix data centre expansion. The move is just one of several in CoreLink's already busy year. In May, the company opened its second facility in Seattle, as well as acquired a new data centre in February in the Mt. Prospect suburb of Chicago.

The data centre has been expanded to deliver 500kW of capacity in the Phoenix metro area and surrounding markets, which will meet the ever-increasing demands of customers requesting to grow its IT infrastructure.

Source: The WHIR

Business cases for building data centres with the intent to begin offering revenue-generating services will normally include items such as income taxes, energy and labour expenses. The impact from transaction taxes for such a service may not be as obvious, but these should also be included in a business case.

One of the main differences between transaction taxes or property and income tax is that transaction taxes apply when an exchange is made regardless of whether the seller made a profit. Determination of applicable transaction taxes will depend on several factors.

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has awarded General Dynamics an $80 million contract to implement technology for the Early Retiree Reinsurance Program (ERRP). The contract is with General Dynamics Information Technology's ViPS health IT subsidiary. If all options are exercised during the four-year period of the agreement, General Dynamics Information Technology's Health IT Solutions sector will add more than 100 jobs as new IT workers develop and deploy the ERRP application and payment systems, as well as support all ERRP operational departments.

Carat Networks, a global IT hosting service provider, has announced it has formed a strategic infrastructure partnership with Ubiquity Server Solutions, which will operate Carat Networks’ core network in Ontario and maintain local network gear in its data centre facility.

ITC^DeltaCom, a provider of integrated communications services to customers in the southeastern United States, has announced its operating and financial results for the quarter ended June 30, 2010.

For the quarter ended June 30, 2010, ITC^DeltaCom reported total operating revenues of US$110.9 million, net loss of US$6.5 million, and adjusted EBITDA of US$23.5 million.

Source: American Chronicle

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Portland Community College is in need of a Tier III data centre to facilitate business continuity and implement disaster recovery strategies. PCC is seeking consulting services to identify, analyze and review co-location facilities for the data centre. One possible site has been identified; PCC wants to identify and evaluate additional opportunities.

Hewlett-Packard has won a federal contract to help improve Medicare claims processing and service delivery. The contract, awarded by the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, is for one base year with seven one-year renewal options. Among other things, the contract calls for Palo Alto-based HP to provide applications support and maintenance services for a system that processes some 750 million Medicare claims annually.

If you think wide-area network optimisation is a niche market, don't bring it up around Jerry Kennelly. The co-founder, chairman and CEO of San Francisco-based Riverbed Technology, Kennelly is a fervent believer that WAN optimization is the foundation for the next generation of IT infrastructure and that Riverbed is poised for a dominant role not only in corporate data centres but in the cloud as well.

360networks, a facilities-based full service wholesale provider of Private Line Transport, IP, VoIP, and Local Access solutions, has announced completion of a fibre build for Advanced Data Centers, an owner and developer of corporate data centres.

For this deployment, 360networks provided fibre from its backbone with diverse laterals into ADC's McClellan Park facility, situated on a former Air Force base with low cost utility rates and state sales tax credits on IT equipment (servers, routers, etc.)

Source: PR Newswire

ClickBank, a secure online retail outlet for more than 17,000 digital product vendors and 110,000 active affiliate marketers, has selected NYI's 999 Frontier Road data centre in Bridgewater, New Jersey to support its global expansion.

Consonus has announced that their South Data Center in Salt Lake City, Utah has been awarded the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s ENERGY STAR, the national symbol for protecting the environment through superior energy efficiency. This is the first commercial data centre in the nation to achieve an ENERGY STAR rating.

“This achievement is a direct result of our continuous improvement program that focuses on resiliency, customer service and energy efficiency,” says Chief Information Officer Brent Wall.

Source: PR Web

Colo5, an independent data centre operator headquartered in Jacksonville, Florida, announced it will provide selective disaster recovery services to the Florida Times-Union and Jacksonville.com.

Based in Jacksonville, the Florida Times- Union and Jacksonville.com are the major daily newspaper and online information distributor in Northeast Florida and Southeast Georgia. In the event of an outage or disaster they would become the direct source of information to the public.

Source: PR Newswire

Level 3 Communications, has announced that it has signed an agreement with the Social Security Administration to provide wavelength services under the Networx Enterprise contract program. “This award from the SSA clearly demonstrates our ability to provide high-quality services that meet the government’s growing need for reliable connectivity and security.”

Extreme Networks has announced that it has been selected for a major campus network and data centre network upgrade at Georgia State University, based on its 4 Pillars Data Center Strategy.

The GSU campus network supports 30,000 students, and more than 50 buildings. Functionality of the network is highlighted by secure and scalable network connectivity addressing critical campus systems ranging from cameras, to lighting systems to heating/cooling to vending machines that benefits from increased automation and monitoring from the network.

PAETEC, a FORTUNE 1000 company which provides data, voice, and Internet solutions to business-class customers nationwide, officially opened an expansive, high-tech data centre in Andover, Massachusetts, approximately 24 miles north of Boston.

This new flagship centre will help customers maintain their critical data, server operating applications, network, and communications assets. It also represents a major step forward for the company towards supporting cloud computing. The 43,000 sq ft data centre near Boston is first of four new PAETEC centres planned for 2010.

Brocade has announced the opening of its state-of-the-art data centre and engineering labs in a 75,000 sq ft space at its new San Jose headquarters, incorporating key elements of flexibility, energy efficiency, sustainable design and technology innovation.

Brocade consolidated three San Jose-area data centres into one 5,000 sq ft state-of-the-art facility, decreasing the physical footprint requirement by 30% and reducing data centre energy consumption by 37 %, which will eliminate 4,450 tons of CO2 emissions per year.

Source: Market Watch

The federal government has agreed to provide more than US$15 million over three years to augment telecommunications in Western Virginia through the installation of hundreds of additional miles of fibre-optic cable allowing for speedy Internet service.

There's US$9.2 million to enable Floyd-based Citizens Telephone Cooperative to expand fibre access in the New River and Roanoke valleys and US$6.9 million for similar upgrades in Rockbridge County, according to a major grant announcement Wednesday by the Commerce Department.

Source: The Roanoke Times

Level 3 Communications has announced that it has signed an expanded agreement with CoSentry, a provider of business continuity and managed technical services, to provide the company with wavelength and high-speed Internet protocol services that will facilitate broadband connectivity for CoSentry's enterprise customers in the Americas, Australia and Europe.

CoreLink Data Centers, a provider of leading-edge colocation services and management of mission critical business applications, has announced the relocation of its Phoenix headquarters to Mount Prospect. Along with completing its headquarter move, the company also announced its new 80,000-plus sq ft data centre is now operational, joining CoreLink’s four other colocation data centres in Seattle, Las Vegas, and Phoenix.

An Indiana technology company has received tax abatement approval for a nearly US$30 million project. Lightbound is planning to build a high-powered data centre in Indianapolis. The project is expected to retain 32 jobs and create 35 others. It was reported in May that the building's major tenant will be email marketing company ExactTarget.

Lightbound plans to spend US$24 million to construct the new centre and another US$4.9 million in new hardware and related IT equipment.

Source: Inside Indiana Business

CME Group has opened a new data centre that provides the world's largest futures exchange operator with capacity to grow trading volume for at least a decade. CME moved its electronic Globex trading platform into the new facility, delivering a small boost in execution speed. A second phase slated for early 2012 will allow brokers and trading firms to house their own systems in the facility, part of a broad industry trend towards co-location that facilitates faster trades.

TierPoint, the data centre services provider in the Inland Northwest has announced enhancements to its network infrastructure. The TierPoint network capacity has been upgraded to a full 10 Gigabits per second (10Gbps) infrastructure. This will push TierPoint’s Internet capacity to over 50Gbps.

Telx, an interconnection and colocation provider in strategic North American markets, has announced that iland, a provider of cloud computing infrastructure, has expanded the geographic reach of its infrastructure-as-a-service services through Telx’s network-neutral data centres.

Telx’s network-rich reliable data centre facilities in Atlanta, New York City and Dallas have increased iland’s security level and uptime while enabling an accelerated response time to their customers’ needs.

Nationwide Mutual Insurance and the village of New Albany are in line for US$290,000 in state incentives for an in-the-works data centre that could create dozens of jobs.

The Ohio Department of Development has announced a US$140,000 grant for Columbus-based Nationwide to fund the purchase of machinery and equipment for a US$135 million data centre the company is building in the village. The state has said the Nationwide project could create up to 40 jobs at the 180,000 sq ft building.

Source: Business First of Columbus

Datalink, a leading provider of data centre infrastructure and services, has announced it was awarded an US$8 million project with a Midwestern global IT consulting and software company.

Datalink will optimize this client's disaster recovery capabilities via disk-based, site-to-site replication technologies. In addition, Datalink will consolidate and virtualize this client's data centre storage infrastructure, making it more agile and easier to manage. In addition to hardware and software, this award includes Datalink professional services and customer support.

Michigan plans to build a data Center to host cloud computing applications, not only for state government agencies, but for local and county governments, school districts and other public entities, as well as businesses in an attempt to spur economic growth.

Access to various Microsoft hosted software products for businesses in North America was affected due to a performance issue with its data centre in the region on Monday.

TierPoint, the premier carrier-class and carrier-neutral data centre services provider in the Inland Northwest, has announced a new US$8.2 million "green" data centre project, known as TierPoint 3. Funding for the project was secured through debt financing from Bank of America/Merrill Lynch (US$4.1 million) and Evergreen Business Capital and the Small Business Administration (US$3.1 million), in addition to a US$1.0 million infusion by TierPoint.

Future Hosting, an Internet solutions provider serving SMBs and enterprises internationally and developer of Future Engineer has launched Virtual Private Servers in Los Angeles, the company’s sixth international data centre location and latest milestone in its global expansion plan.

The new location, which has been in development for the past several months, is significant as Future Hosting aims to serve more customers in Asia and on the West Coast of the United States.

Source: W3

To stay safe in hot conditions, experts recommend that workers move more slowly. The same advice fits data centres, apparently. To prevent outages and keep work moving, Purdue University has successfully tested out a technique for controlling operations of its computing clusters in overheating conditions by slowing down the performance of its nodes.

180Servers, on-demand dedicated Web hosting provider, has announced that due to their rapid rate of growth, the company has decided to further their expansion into their ash1 facility, located in Asheville, North Carolina. The company has bought an adequate amount of new servers, ready to be installed and deployed into their ash1 facility.

FiberLight, has, announced it has begun construction of a 46-mile direct connection from Culpeper, Virginia to Charlottesville, Virginia. The completely underground fibre optic network will use enhanced fibre for lower latency and provide a diverse route to companies in Charlottesville seeking mission critical, high capacity optical transport to the greater Washington D.C. area.

King Crane is helping to build one of California’s largest data centres on 17.2 acres in Santa Clara Valley. The data centre, named SC1, will ultimately comprise 360,000 sq ft and have total power capacity of 26 megawatts.

Of course, the general contractor first thought of King Crane, the South Bay’s largest crane rental company. King is responsible for transporting and setting all of the centres large transformers, chillers, breakers, switch gear and mechanical systems. The data centre is expected to open its doors in early 2011.

Source: PR Web

A computer snag is causing problems today at 24 state agencies, including the departments of motor vehicles, transportation, taxation, social services, emergency management and alcoholic beverage control, as well as at the Virginia Employment Commission. Chief Information Officer Sam Nixon said the problems began when hardware failed on one of the disk sub-systems in the state's data centre late Wednesday.

Data centre developer T5 Partners plans to build a roughly US$75 million facility in metro Atlanta. The 100,000 sq ft centre would be among the five largest in the region, and include several mini data centres.

T5, which is developing two data centre parks in Charlotte, is considering a dozen sites for its metro Atlanta data centre, partner Jason Chartrand said.

Source: Atlanta Business Chronicle

Here for full article
 

Continental Broadband, a provider of data centre colocation, managed services and connectivity solutions in several eastern US markets, has announced their expansion into the Columbus, Ohio market. Preparations are underway to make their latest, state of the art data centre active for customers by January 1, 2011.

Involta. a company based in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, that provides third-party data centre services, has announced plans to build and operate a US$20 million enterprise data centre in Akron.

Involta said design of the 46,000 sq ft facility is under way and the company anticipates it will be operating by the fourth quarter of 2011.

Source: PR Newswire

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Sisters of Mercy Health System has officially launched its new US$60 million data centre in Washington, Missouri. The health-care system broke ground on the 42,500 sq ft centre in April 2008 in the Heidmann Industrial Park on Vossbrink Drive near Highway 100 in Washington.

Missouri Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder, other state and local officials, and Mercy executives attended an opening ceremony and open house at the new centre on Monday..

Source: St. Louis Business Journal

Grand Rapids-based US Signal has been a pioneer of connectivity for more than a decade. A leading data service provider in the Midwest, the company has announced that it is significantly expanding its long-haul fibre network in Southern and Central Illinois, St. Louis, Missouri and Southern Indiana.

This expansion will add approximately 1,000 miles of long-haul fibre to the US Signal network. The expansion is part of US Signal's commitment to being the most dependable, flexible, and reliable provider of data bandwidth in the Midwest.

Source: PR Newswire

Continuing its cloud computing buying spree, IT management software provider CA Technologies has announced that it plans to acquire authentication solutions provider Arcot for US$200 million.

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has named a cyber infrastructure expert to oversee its US$100 million supercomputer data centre. James Myers will be the first person appointed to lead the Troy school’s Center for Nanotechnology Innovations full time. The center opened in 2007.