CSC has announced that the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services awarded the company a task order to support the agency's Office of Information Technology. The contract has a one-year base, two one-year options and an estimated total three-year value of US$291 million. This work falls under the Department of Homeland Security's Enterprise Acquisition Gateway for Leading Edge Solutions (EAGLE) contract, originally awarded to CSC in 2006.

Harris Corporation, an international communications and information technology company, was awarded four contracts worth a total of over US$12 million by the U.S. Air Force's Electronic Systems Center through the Cyber Integration Division, Information Transport Systems Program Management Office. 

The Mahwah Police Department has received a Homeland Security grant to help it protect the New York Stock Exchange Data Center on MacArthur Boulevard.

The US$124,633 grant can be used by the department to purchase radio systems, computers, lighting and surveillance equipment and for preparedness planning, Chief James Batelli said. The Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness requires that officers attend state training prior to the department acquiring the equipment.

Source: North Jersey.com

Fogo Data Centers is a private company headquartered in Carrollton, Georgia, is expanding its facility in New Orleans. The economic development agency Greater New Orleans Inc. said that Fogo will spend US$5 million and create 20 new jobs. The company currently has a staff of 17 in the city.

Fogo operates regional data centres designed for use by small and medium-sized businesses, educational institutions, health care providers and local governments.

Source: VCStar

Plans for a new US$500 million office and data centre building for the Social Security Administration have moved a step closer. Rick Boyle, vice president of Natelli Communities in Gaithersburg, developer of the Urbana Corporate Center, has confirmed that the SSA bought the land in Urban, Frederick County.

According to the local Board of Commissioners, the SSA selected the Urbana Corporate Center location in Frederick after evaluating more than 150 sites.

A power surge that recently shut down the state's internal network for several hours will end up costing the government $500,000, officials have said  The Department of General Administration estimates that it will cost about US$130,000 to purchase and install a new electrical vault switch. Other costs are for generator fuel, worker overtime and a new consultant who is assessing the situation.

Science Applications International Corporation has announced it was awarded a prime contract by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to provide IT services in support of the Transformation Twenty-One Total Technology program.  The indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract has a five-year base period of performance and a ceiling value of US$12 billion.

Cross River Fiber, a New Jersey-based, boutique dark fibre optic and telecommunications solutions provider, has announced it will build a dark fibre network to IO NEW JERSEY, the largest modular data centre in existence.

For Ontario’s IT chief, the lack of Canadian-built data centres is the only thing standing in the way of increased provincial adoption of cloud services. David Nicholl, corporate chief information officer at the Government of Ontario, said after building its new Guelph, Ont.-based data centre earlier this year, the province began testing a private cloud solution with a set of hosted Microsoft services. his includes hosted versions of Microsoft Exchange, SharePoint, Forefront Identity Manager, Windows 7 and Office 2010.

Netrouting, a leading Netherlands based Internet service provider, has expanded into the United States with a little help from ColoHouse’s Miami data centre. Founded in 2009, Miami, Fla., based ColoHouse has rapidly become a premier data centre colocation facility and a leading provider of carrier neutral data centre services in North America.

The venture capitalist arm of the chipmaker – Intel Capital – has put $5 million (£3.1 million) of funding into the firm’s Operations Virtualisation platform, adding to the $11 million it had already won from Sierra Ventures and partners.

DynamicOps’ platform specifically helps with automising and managing cloud environments, whether they are private or public, with software ranging from automating disaster recovery through to managing virtual machine sprawl.

Source: Cloudpro

CSC has announced it has signed a ten-year contract with a U.S. based global multi-brand commercial products manufacturer to provide IT and infrastructure managed services. The contract is a global 10 year agreement with an estimated value of more than US$900 million and was effective on September 1, 2011. By leveraging CSC’s expertise and global network of delivery centres, the new client expects to improve the overall efficiency and service level of its IT function.

Telx, a leading interconnection and data centre provider in 15 strategic North American markets, has announced that Expereo, a leading global wholesale provider of last-mile connectivity services, has joined the award-winning Telx Ethernet Exchange to expand the reach of its own Ethernet service delivery footprint in the Metro New York City region.

An ambitious project to centralize the federal government's far-flung data centres will take at least a decade, and require up to C$278 million in new spending, an internal report concludes. The findings raise questions about whether the far-reaching plan will help eliminate the federal deficit by 2014, as promised by the prime minister, or simply aggravate Ottawa's money woes in the short term.

Bank of America, the biggest U.S. lender by assets, will likely lose that distinction as Chief Executive Brian Moynihan partly dismantles the money-losing empire built by his predecessor. The bank, based in Charlotte, N.C., will eliminate 30,000 jobs in the next few years as part of Moynihan's plan to bolster profit and the company's stock.

Textura Corporation, the leading provider of collaboration solutions for the construction industry, announces the successful relocation of the company's primary data centre to Latisys-Chicago in Oakbrook, Illinois pictured).  This Tier III data centre offers world-class physical security, power availability, infrastructure flexibility and growth capacity. 

Vantage Data Centers, an innovative wholesale data centre owner, developer and operator, has announced that just 12 months following its launch in the summer of 2010, the company is more than two years ahead of plan in developing and leasing its Santa Clara campus.

Savvis, a CenturyLink company has announced its schedule of North American data centre expansions and grand openings for the second half of 2011.

Carpathia Hosting, the leading provider of enterprise managed hosting services for government agencies and businesses, has announced that Urban Airship, provider of the world's most successful mobile apps, has chosen Carpathia as a strategic managed hosting partner, supporting strong connectivity for its customers and devices around the world.

After an extensive West Coast selection process, Marvell has chosen Benaroya's South Hill Data Center to meet its future active computing and disaster recovery requirements. "We are pleased to be working with Marvell to meet their data center requirements," said Larry Benaroya, Principal of The Benaroya Company. "South Hill Data Center provides an ideal secure facility to handle the rapidly expanding demands of cloud computing, data storage and retrieval, and disaster recovery."

FireHost, a company that specializes in secured cloud hosting, has raised US$10 million in Series B funding in a round led by family-owned private equity firm The Stephens Group, with earlier backers also participating. The additional capital will be used to scale the company and enter the European market (starting with the UK).

FireHost, which is based in Dallas, Texas, is a managed hosting provider for websites and applications with critical data protection and performance needs (think ecommerce sites and healthcare IT services).

Science Applications International Corporation has announced it was awarded a prime contract by the U.S. Army Information Systems Engineering Command to provide information systems engineering and IT services in support of the United States Army Information Systems Engineering Command and federal agency communication systems worldwide.  The multiple award, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract has a five year period of performance with a total contract ceiling value of $892 million.

Web hosting provider Immedion has announced that it has won a colocation contract from media distribution company CM3 Media. Recently, Immedion announced it will open its third data centre in Charleston, South Carolina in late spring 2012.

Deutsche Telekom's IT unit T-Systems is bullish about the cloud services opportunity, but does not want its customers' information being compromised by the U.S. government accessing their information. With security being top of mind for businesses considering cloud services, Reinhard Clemens, T-Systems' CEO, said in a recent conference in Bonn, Germany that it wants to be able to shield their German customers from U.S. government access that's allowed through the Patriot Act.

Missouri lawmakers are considering a package of tax breaks aimed at recruiting computer data centres. The incentives would exempt sales taxes and allow local governments to partner with companies such as Google Inc. that operate data centres. Backers say they hope new incentives could help Missouri challenge neighbouring states for the data centres and the jobs that come with them.

Senators approved that bill last week, and a House committee was scheduled to consider the legislation Monday. The full House could vote on the proposal later this week

Source: KSPR

Telx, a leading interconnection and data centre provider in strategic North American markets, has announced the successful completion of its Statement on Standards for Attestation Engagements (SSAE) No. 16 examination. The examination was conducted by Weaver and Tidwell, LLP (Weaver), a full service accounting firm providing SSAE 16 Type 1 and Type 2 reports that evaluated Telx's design and operating effectiveness of internal controls and processes.

Pittsburgh-based pair Networks is building an ultra-efficient data center in the desert near Las Vegas that the website-hosting company says will be one of the greenest facilities of its kind in the world. But pair Network's commitment to recycled building materials and solar panels isn't just about being Earth-friendly. The 15-year-old South Side firm also wants to set itself apart as a quality company committed to the future in an industry that's full of low-cost providers that sometimes leave their customers hanging.

The U.S. Air Force has given Lockheed Martin a US$791 million contract to provide IT services on its Global Combat Support System program.

Layer42 Networks, a premier provider of fibre optic-based network solutions in the San Francisco Bay area, has announced that it has extended its fibre optic network to the DuPont Fabros Technology data centre in Santa Clara, California (pictured).

DFT's tenants will benefit from ultra low-latency connectivity to key peering exchanges and carrier hotels through a protected fibre network.  DFT's Santa Clara data centre is now connected to five of the major carrier hotels and subsea landings on the west coast and twenty of the Bay area's most popular legacy data centres.

To meet growing demand for high-density colocation and cloud services in the Southern California market, Latisys, a leading national provider of IT outsourcing solutions from colocation to cloud, has announced it has commissioned the first 22,000 sq ft and 10 MW of power in its 93,000 sq ft data centre in Irvine, CA (pictured). The new facility will be on display and available for data centre tours at Latisys' Grand Opening event September 22, 2011.

Digital Realty Trust, a global provider of data centre solutions, has completed the expansion to its existing 293,000 sq ft data centre facility at 2121 S. Price Road in Chandler, Arizona. The expansion, which began in the first quarter of 2011, has added approximately 226,000 rentable sq ft of data centre space and 13 megawatts of additional power to meet customer demand in the Phoenix market.

360networks, a facilities-based wholesale provider of Private Line Transport, Ethernet, IP, and VoIP services, today announced completion of a build out to the redIT data centre, 12270 World Trade Drive, San Diego, California. This new data center location provides customers with additional connectivity solutions in support of their cloud services and other end-user applications. With this new location 360networks now covers over 70 markets within its 22 state coverage area.

Web hosting provider PEER 1 Hosting has announced it has partnered with retail ecommerce platform provider Magento to deliver a new optimized managed hosting solution to online retailers.

OpSource, Dimension Data’s wholly-owned enterprise cloud and managed hosting business, has announced the opening of a new cloud hosting facility in Santa Clara, California, offering its enterprise, service provider and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) clients a highly-secure, enterprise-class hosting solution for both development and production cloud environments.

Internap Network Services, a provider of intelligent IT Infrastructure services, has announced a relocation of its corporate headquarters from downtown Atlanta to One Ravinia Drive (pictured) in the Perimeter region of metro-Atlanta that will take place in the first quarter of 2012.

T5 Data Centers, a leading data centre owner and operations firm focusing on enterprise and wholesale data centres, said it has expanded into California with the addition of a new partner, opening of a San Francisco office and conversion of a building into a wholesale data centre in Los Angeles. T5 hired data centre development expert Aaron Wangenheim as executive vice president and partner. He is responsible for business development and leading T5's expansion into the Western U.S.

AboveNet, a leading provider of high bandwidth connectivity solutions, has announced that it is now connected to DuPont Fabros Technology's data centre, SC1, located in Santa Clara, California (pictured). With the completion of the fibre build-out to SC1, AboveNet is able to provide services to all DFT data centres.

Ground was broken Thursday for Involta’s US$10.5 million data centre in Duluth, but a second phase probably will follow. Already the planned data centre is one-third full with committed tenants, said Lonnie Bloomquist, the company’s chief technology officer. And when Involta’s centres are 80% full, planning starts on the next phase, he said.

City Zoning commissioners have given the owners of NordenPark the green light to build a two-story office building at 10 Norden Place that will house a data centre. Under the approved plan, a two-story office building with a footprint of 77,000 sq ft and a total square footage of 167,588 sq ft will rise in the parking lot on the eastern side of NordenPark. The ground floor would be occupied by data racks and associated electrical equipment support equipment. A 25-person staff would occupy the second floor.

Microsoft will invest an additional US$150 million to expand their generation data centre (Gen4) site in Mecklenburg County, Governor Bob McDonnell has announced. The company will build an additional facility and add 21 MW of electric power capacity to the site. The project will create 10 new jobs. Microsoft’s original project in 2010 involved an investment of up to US$499 million and 50 new jobs.

Peak 10, a managed services and cloud provider with world-class data centres, has announced y it is delivering data centre solutions to James River Equipment Companies, the John Deere, construction and forestry dealership that provides parts, services and sales to customers in the Midwest and south-eastern United States.

Power Assure, a data centre infrastructure and energy management solutions provider, has announced that it has closed a new round of funding, securingUS$13.5 million in Series B financing.  Strategic partner ABB  led the round while existing investors Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Good Energies, and Judith Point Capital all participated.

InfoZen, a provider of IT services, technology and solutions for the public sector, has announced that it won a new five-year prime contract valued at US$90 million from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the principal investigative arm of the Department of Homeland Security.

Wal-Mart, which announced in July that it would build a 210,000 sq ft corporate data centre in northern Colorado Springs, has finalized its purchase of the site — paying about US$5.3 million for the land.

Peak 10, a managed services and cloud provider with world-class data centers, has announced that it is delivering data centre solutions to Health Decisions, a leading clinical research organization (CRO) specializing in Adaptive Clinical Trials. Health Decisions is utilizing dedicated hosting services, reliable Internet bandwidth and Metro Ethernet at Peak 10 Raleigh’s enterprise-class campus.

Tufts' new Boston data centre promises to increase the speed and reliability of the Tufts network thanks to updated technology and additional servers. The leased space in the Markley Group's Boston Data Center, which became functional this summer, will house technology responsible for improving the efficiency of the Tufts network, according to Philip Pascale, associate director of network services for University Information Technology (UIT).

AT&T has nearly completed the hiring of 64 new technicians to support its U-verse services, but some positions are still available. AT&T is investing more than US$20 million to upgrade a pair of Bridgeton buildings. The first building, located at 3746 Pennridge, will house U-verse technicians and management teams. The second building, located 12976 Hollenberg, will serve as a data centre.

Renovations will last through early 2012, but employees will still be able to work on site.

Source: KSDK

Integra Telecom, a provider of fibre-based, business grade networking, communications and cloud solutions, has invested more than US$11 million in infrastructure and network upgrades in Colorado, Minnesota, Nevada and Washington.

Google is back in Pryor — and it’s ‘Google speed’ ahead. The company announced plans to build a US00 million data centre at Mid-America Industrial Park in 2007. The project was stalled for a time but has since resumed.

Making the mobile Web not only faster, but also greener, Opera Software has chosen Fortress Colocation Centers as its newest provider for its North American data centre services. The Fortress offering of a renewable green energy source, low PUE and high availability of fiber and fiber providers was instrumental in helping Opera choose Fortress as the primary colocation provider in the Pacific Northwest.