Metro Nashville will offer HCA a seven-year tax break for expanding in Nashville. HCA announced last week a $200 million expansion project that includes a new data centre in Antioch. The investment is to create more than 150 jobs over the next five years.

A power outage that outage affected the data centre of Caixa Economica Federal in Brasilia on Wednesday has shut down a number of lottery outlets across several states. The lottery of São Paulo, for example, were out of operation since around 15h, preventing services like bill payments and withdrawals.The outage also affected the bank's branch network in the North and Midwest.

According to sources, the problem was due to an overload in the public power in Brasilia, at 15.55, which damaged the bank's data centre.

Source: Baguette

Presidio, Inc., a leading provider of professional and managed services for advanced IT solutions, has announced that it has acquired BlueWater Communications, a provider of high-performance, holistic IT infrastructure solutions to growing companies.  The senior executive team at Presidio also welcomed industry veteran, Bob Cagnazzi, CEO of BlueWater, as the new Chief Executive Officer of Presidio, Inc. effective immediately.  Presidio is owned by American Securities LLC and management.

Wired Real Estate Group, the nation's leading data centre advisor, has completed the placement of a national colocation company in an 82,000 sq ft property in Denver, Colorado. The site has 14 MW of existing utility service, and when completed, the site is expected to garner over US$50 million in investment as a high density, Tier III colocation facility.

Westerville has opened the doors to its US$7 million community data centre.

The project, called WeConnect, located at 35 Collegeview Road, spans 16,000 sq ft. The data centre provides area businesses with access to the city’s 66-mile fibre-optic network, cloud computing and secured data storage. Prices depend on the services and range between US$100 and US$100,000 a month. It took three years to complete the project, city officials said. To help with the US$7 million cost, Franklin County allocated a US$5.75 million stimulus bond to the city that isn’t taxable.

Minnesota-based telecommunications firm HickoryTech has announced it has completed its acquisition of Fargo, North Dakota-based hosting and colocation services provider IdeaOne Telecom Group for US$28 million. The deal is the latest in the ongoing trend of telecommunication firms moving into the hosting space in an effort to become a one stop shop for SMBs. It also goes to show that many acquisitions of hosting companies are implemented for the purpose of expanding its customer base in new regions.

Telx has announced that Black Lotus has leveraged Telx’s C³ Cloud Connection Center in Los Angeles, Calif. to strengthen its Distributed Denial of Services  protection and mitigation solutions. By tapping into Telx’s carrier-neutral community of telecommunications service providers via the Telx Connect Portfolio, Black Lotus can select its preferred carriers to quickly and effectively trace the source of network traffic that is often the cause of DDoS attacks.

San Jose-based SunPower has landed a plum contract: Its solar panels will generate electricity for Apple's massive new data centre in Maiden, N.C., according to a filing with regulators in that state.

Apple has said renewable energy--solar panels and fuels cells--will power a "high percentage" of the data centre’s overall electricity needs, leading to speculation in Silicon Valley's clean tech industry about who its technology partners are.

Source: Inside Bay Area

The IT Management Group, a professional IT management service provider, has announced they have selected Online Tech's data centres to assist clients with HIPAA, SOX and PCI compliance.

IBM has announced that its new high-performance computing technology and services will power the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s operational weather and climate supercomputers to support fast, reliable weather forecasts. During a competitive bid process, IBM was awarded the $502M federal contract (inclusive of options) that continues the 10-year relationship between IBM and NOAA until 2016 and optionally through 2021.

Panama President Ricardo Martinelli has inaugurated information technology firm KIO Networks’ new data centre in the Panama Pacifico development. The facility will be KIO’s new regional headquarters, and the company’s first office in Central America.

Systems Made Simple has been awarded a US$715 million contract with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to work on managing VA data centres.

Local web hosting outfit, Anchor, has “gone Hollywood” and set up a point of presence in Los Angeles. The PoP is aimed at providing Australian technology and e-retail companies with an affordable and high performance hosting service that will enable them to reach new customers in the U.S.

Construction work is under way at Apple Inc.'s data centre in North Carolina, which will be powered in part by a private solar farm being built by the company. The Hickory Daily Record reports that environmental permits have been issued for construction at the data centre campus in the town of Maiden. Also, a contractor for work at the site has filed for a building permit. It's not clear if the construction is for a second data centre that was planned, or for something else.

TechCity Properties, the Hudson Valley’s premier commercial real estate redevelopment site, together with Time Warner Cable Business Class, has announced the companies have completed a project that brings an advanced communications fibre network to the 258-acre, 2.2 million sq ft TechCity complex, a scheme which is  actively being marketed to large data centre operators.

The US Federal government has announced it has appointed Todd Park as assistant to the president and US chief technology officer. He fills a vacancy created by last month’s departure of Aneesh Chopra, the nation’ first CTO, who had occupied the position since May 2009.

Bank of America has abandoned plans to build a corporate data centre at the Center Valley Club in Pennsylvania. Sierra Management closed the golf course in October after Bank of America began looking at the property as the possible site of a nearly 1 million-sq ft corporate data centre, a massive complex that could have housed acres of computer servers.

Digital Realty Trust, a leading global data centre solutions provider, has released key findings from its annual study of the North American data centre market. The research was conducted by Campos Research & Analysis, which surveyed senior decision makers at large corporations in North America who are responsible for shaping their companies' data centre strategies.

IO, the leading provider of next-generation modular data centre technology and services, has announced that they have been awarded a contract by Southern Foodservice Management, Inc., a leading provider in onsite dining, catering and vending services.

DataGryd, a new leader in green urban data centre design, has announced the grand opening of its facility at 60 Hudson Street, the original Western Union Building known today as the premiere carrier hotel in North America. The company has undergone a comprehensive infrastructure retrofit of the 80-year old space, replacing outdated mechanical systems and transforming the power and cooling capacity.

IceWEB, a leading provider of Unified Data Storage appliances for cloud and virtual environments, announced that its government channel group has received a major order from Frederick County, Maryland for IceWEB 6000 Unified Data Storage Systems for highly redundant tier 1 primary and secondary storage across multiple locations for high availability, disaster recovery and continuity of operations.

Transtelco has announced that it has completed the initial phase of it metropolitan Fiber network in Reynosa, Mexico. Construction has been on going and Transtelco plans to connect both Wholesale and Enterprise customers back to its Core Network Backbone across the entire Southern United States and beyond. Reynosa also now counts with its own US-Mexico Border crossing which will enable Transtelco to offer competitive solutions for Transport, IP Access, Voice, Collocation and Content Delivery services.

As part of FireHost's global expansion, which saw the secure cloud host launch operations in Europe earlier this year, the company is now offering services at a state-of-the-art data centre in Phoenix, Arizona. The Phoenix facility mirrors the innovative, secure cloud hosting environments FireHost has established in Dallas and London, and will allow customers an additional option in choosing where their servers reside.

Rackspace the biggest competitor to Amazon.com in the market for Web-based data centres reached a record high after sales and profit topped analysts’ estimates.

Rackspace’s revenue in that area jumped 86% last quarter to US$58.5 million, the San Antonio-based company has said. Sales in the traditional dedicated server business, where the company manages specific machines for customers, rose 23% to US$224.8 million. Net income jumped 85% to US$25 million from US$13.5 million, a year earlier. Revenue climbed 32% to US$283.3 million.

Carter Validus Mission Critical REIT has announced that it has acquired the Northwoods Data Center, located in Norcross, Georgia, for a purchase price of US$5,300,000, plus closing costs. The property is located about 20 miles from downtown Atlanta and has approximately 33,000 sq ft

Google has opened a new front on a less-noticed impact of data centres – water consumption. Like power plants, data centres, with their acres of servers, suck up millions of gallons of water a year for cooling (as an alternative to using electricity-hogging mechanical chillers).

Apptio, the provider of on-demand Technology Business Management solutions, has announced that it has closed a US$50 million Series D funding round. Certain investment strategies managed by T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc. led the round and were also joined by existing investors Andreessen Horowitz, Greylock Partners, Madrona Venture Group and Shasta Ventures.

The National Security Agency is putting the finishing touches to a huge data centre that will be used to store the personal phone calls, emails and Google searches of people on the agency's watch list. The facility will have 100,000 sq ft of IT space split across four 25,000 sq ft data halls.

Cox Business has teamed up with IO Data Center to provide a robust data recovery solution for the International Genomics Consortium (IGC) in Phoenix. ICG, a cancer research organization, is using a fibre link from Cox Business to create a direct connection from its Phoenix headquarters to IO’s Phoenix data centre. The Cox Business Metro Ethernet connection serves as a disaster recovery option and backup network connecting IGC to IO.

SunGard Availability Services have reported several of its customers were impacted by the Boston Back Bay electrical fire last week. Nearly 300 employees unable to return to their facilities resumed business operations at the end-user Workforce Continuity Center in Marlborough, Mass.

Level 3 Communications has announced that it is broadening its global data centre capabilities by adding high-density enterprise-ready space to its San Francisco facility. This additional data centre space will accommodate enterprise growth that requires an efficient, scalable, enterprise-ready facility to support their business applications.

Internap Network Services, a provider of intelligent IT Infrastructure services, has announced that National Vision, a large optical retailers, is leveraging multiple Internap services, including its robust, scalable colocation and content delivery network, powered by its patented, high-performance IP network.

IO, the provider of next-generation modular data centre technology and services, announced today that they have been awarded a contract by The Juilliard School, the world-renowned performing arts conservatory.

As part of the agreement, IO will provide Juilliard with data centre as a service delivered out of the IO New Jersey data centre. This approach supplies Juilliard a high-performance, cost-effective solution – without having to invest resources in building and maintaining its own data centre.

Digital Realty Trust, a global data centre provider, hosted a ground breaking ceremony on Wednesday morning, celebrating the start of construction at its 105 Cabot St. building in Needham.

The new three-story 130,335 sq ft data centre and office facility will be located approximately 1/4-mile from Route 128/I-95. The event was attended by Needham town officials, Digital Realty executives and project team managers. Jones Lang LaSalle is serving as the leasing agent.

Data centre services provider, Phoenix NAP has announced that NIC, an IT support services provider, has selected the data centre for its IT needs. The IT solutions company cited Phoenix NAP's ideal location away from disaster prone areas, redundant systems, 24x7 NOC services, security certifications and cost effective pricing structure as motivating factors in choosing Phoenix NAP.

Internet Initiative Japan and its 100% owned subsidiary, IIJ America have announced to jointly provide Cloud computing service "IIJ GIO US ervice" in the United States of America. IIJ GIO US Service will provide a high quality and flexible server environment in the United States. Depending on the usage needs, users can choose Cloud server type from two categories: virtual and physical.

A national site-selection firm reports that Albuquerque is the sixth-best American city in which to locate secure data centres. The Boyd Co. Inc., based in Princeton, N.J., said that Albuquerque made its top 10 list because of its “robust bandwidth; telecommunications and power infrastructures; favourable operating cost structures; and its (established) high tech research base.”

IT solutions provider ndtHOST has announced it will break ground on a new data centre this week in Rockledge. The facility is expected to be completed within eight to 10 months of ground-breaking, according to Ray Corriveau, vice president of business development at ndtHOST.

When completed, the new data centre will be a 25,000 sq ft commercial computing facility featuring 24/7 on-site security, a 24/7 network operations centre, biometric access control, advanced power generation and more.

Digital Realty Trust, a global provider of data centre solutions, has signed a long-term lease agreement with Bluebird Network for Powered Base Building space in Digital Realty's 210 N. Tucker property in St. Louis, Missouri. Bluebird Network provides fibre optic services in Missouri, Illinois, and surrounding states. Bluebird operates the merged networks of Missouri Network Alliance, Illinois Network Alliance, and Bluebird Media.

Host Virtual has completed a significant expansion in its 6 US Cloud location data centres, including San Jose, Los Angeles, Dallas, Chicago, Virginia and New York. Host Virtual also noted that Cloud Deployments to its US locations are growing strongly not only from US based business looking for low latency services or transitioning away from more expensive colocation and dedicated models, but also from international customers deploying to the US.

DuPont Fabros Technology, owner, developer, operator and manager of wholesale data centres, has announced that the Company increased its unsecured revolving credit from US$100 million to US$225 million. The amended facility has a new maturity date of March 21, 2016, and includes a one-year extension option that is exercisable upon the payment of an extension fee and the satisfaction of certain other customary conditions.

Responding to increasing enterprise demand for managed and cloud infrastructure services, Latisys, a national provider of IT outsourcing solutions – from colocation to cloud – has announced the company is adding 72,000 sq ft of highly secure, high density, carrier grade IT infrastructure space along with significant power upgrades. Latisys’ total data centre footprint exceeds 500,000 sq ft across seven data centres in four major markets.

GE Energy is launching its new GPS 4827 and GPS 2436 telecom energy systems with power electronics energy efficiency approaching 97% and flexible equipment leasing options.

Designed to accelerate energy efficiency upgrades across mid-size central offices, mobile switching centres, internet data centres and other communications facilities, the new Galaxy Power System DC power plants help carriers cost-effectively achieve their sustainability objectives through Total Efficiency technology.

Level 3 Communications, has announced it has renewed an agreement, through its locally licensed affiliate in Mexico, with Grupo Elektra, a rapidly growing leader in the financial and specialty retail services market in Latin America. Under the agreement, Level 3 will provide services to help strengthen and improve the security, reliability and efficiency of Grupo Elektra's communications.  

Wired Real Estate Group, a data centre advisor, has completed advisory work for the Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Centre (MGHPCC), a five university partnership of MIT, Northeastern University, Boston University, University of Massachusetts, and Harvard University. The development will include a 93,000 sq ft Massachusetts data centre with 15 MW of utility service.

ServerCentral, the Chicago-based data centre solutions company, has announced the opening of its 2.6 MW, 20,000 sq ft data centre expansion in Elk Grove Village, Illinois set within the multi-tenant data centre operated by DuPont Fabros Technology. It is ServerCentral’s fourth expansion within the facility since early 2009, bringing the footprint to more than 40,000 sq ft and 5.5 MW of critical load to support its infrastructure portfolio.

DataBank Holdings, a custom data centre and colocation provider based in Dallas, has announced plans for development of a new data centre facility in North Dallas. DataBank’s construction plans have placed the facility opening in the fourth quarter of this year.

The Kearney City Council have voted to expand Kearney’s data park to 165 acres by purchasing an additional 53 acres adjoining Tech oNE Crossing.The city has been developing Tech oNE Crossing on about 112 acres near 56th Street and Antelope Avenue as a tech park that would be available for a data centre.

American Fork City this week approved a letter of intent to lease its fiber-optic network to a technology company. Ace Data Center, an Orem-based company that provides bandwidth data services, had approached American Fork City in January, according to documents reviewed by the Citizen, to request the use of its fibre network to downtown Salt Lake City.

The company said it intends to tie into its current fiber network to provide service to customers as well as a backup for its current network.

In Pennsylvania, The Board of Trustees have recently approved plans to build a combined data centre for the University and health system. The new 16,500 sq ft facility will be housed in the former DuPont Marshall Research Lab, a 25-acre property located at the South Bank on 34th Street and Grays Ferry Avenue.