Virtual Infrastructure Professionals is to spend NZ$250,000 on creating data storage services in Hastings in the next three months, and will then look for a larger, permanent data centre in Hawke’s Bay with a tier 2.5 or higher rating. VIP says Hastings fibre company UnisonFibre’s fibre network was the impetus for the move. Although UnisonFibre bid for the Hawke's Bay ultra-fast broadband contract, but lost out to Chorus, it has established a fibre loop which serves business customers.

ASX-listed data centre builder, NextDC, has hired a new COO, Simon Cooper, and general sales manager, Nick Hillier. Both recruits will start their roles in October.

The Global cloud computing market is forecast to grow from US$12.3 billion to US$42 billion by 2014 at compound annual growth rate of 27.7%, compared to 5% CAGR of traditional information technology service market, according to Taiwan’s Market Intelligence & Consulting Institute under the Institute for Information Industry.

ASG Group has shown off its new tier A3 $13 million data centre and cloud computing facility located in Bentley Technology Park precinct, just outside of Perth CBD in Western Australia.

Digital Realty Trust, a leading global provider of data centre solutions, announced today that it has completed the acquisition of 162 and 163 Radnor Drive, a 30,250 sq m development site, in Melbourne, Australia for a purchase price of approximately AU $4.1 million. This represents the second acquisition in Australia for Digital Realty Trust.

Boustead Singapore has announced that its wholly-owned subsidiary, Boustead Projects Pte Ltd, has been awarded an S$11 million contract to build an integrated Asia Pacific regional data centre. It added that the facility is for a Fortune 100 transnational healthcare and pharmaceutical corporation located at Tuas Biomedical Park (TBP) II.

The data centre will be constructed beside the existing manufacturing plant at the TBP II and is expected to be completed in the second quarter of 2012.

Source: Channel News

President Benigno Aquino III has ruled out the revival of the controversial national broadband project entered into by the Arroyo administration. Although Aquino recognized the need for such information technology infrastructure, the President is not keen to revive the deal with China's ZTE Corporation, which was said to be overpriced. In a separate report, two government officials said the proposed government broadband network - similar but cheaper than NBN - is not being rushed although the government is setting its sights on developing a robust but cheap IT infrastructure.

IBM, the world's largest tech services company, has renegotiated its outsourcing contract with Vodafone Essar and signed an extended deal estimated at around US$1 billion to manage IT systems for the country's third-biggest phone firm till 2017.

Shivaji University is going to set up a central data centre for strengthening the varsity’s digital infrastructure. It will cost around Rs3 crore, of which Rs1 crore will be spent on computer-related material.”

SU vice chancellor, NJ Pawar, said the Union government’s department of science and technology has sanctioned Rs1 crore under the scheme, promotion of university research and scientific excellence. “The central data centre has already been set up at Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar Marathwada University, University of Pune and College of Engineering, Pune..

Source: DNA

Data centre owner/operator, Metronode, has been selected for the Federal Government’s panel for the provision of greenfield data centres to government agencies, with the company’s two greenfield sites in Melbourne and Canberra selected as part of the panel. Metronode general manager, Malcolm Roe, said both sites will use the BladeRoom modular data centre technology which delivers “environmental benefits and real energy savings to the end user.”

Local start-up OrionVM has taken capacity at the new Equinix S3 data centre in Sydney, as the cloud infrastructure start-up continues its efforts to crack the A$1 million revenue milestone.

OrionVM, founded in 2009 by CEO Sheng Yeo and his peers at the University of Technology Sydney, Joseph Glanville and Alex Sharp, offers a high-performance computing and storage services platform delivered over the web. It has commissioned independent testing, which shows that it outperforms Amazon in key metrics.

Source: ZDNet

The CEO of US internet giant SoftLayer is visiting Sydney and Melbourne this week in a bid to determine which city will host the company's next data centre. SoftLayer is one of America's largest and fastest-growing web hosts. It is considered to be at the forefront of cloud computing, despite the model accounting for only ten percent of revenue.

NTT Com Asia Limited has held a foundation stone laying ceremony for its new NTT Communications Hong Kong TKO Data Centre as its first financial data centre in Hong Kong. The financial data centre will provide critical infrastructure designed to strengthen the city’s strategic position both as a global financial centre and as an Asian Information Communications Technology hub.

Hewlett Packard has scrapped plans to build a NZ$60 million data centre at Tuakau, in the Counties-Manukau region and plans to review locations for a new site. The company announced plans for a 500 sq m data centre in March and claimed that construction would start this year, and fully operational by early 2012.

Sh. Sachin Pilot, the Union Minister of State for Communications and Information Technology has inaugurated the Nagaland State Data Centre in Kohima.

Speaking on the occasion Sh. Pilot said that the Centre, established at a cost of Rs 30.68 crores, will enable consolidation of services, applications and infrastructure to provide efficient electronic delivery of different kinds of services. Under the SDCs scheme, data repositories/data centres are being created in various States/UTs so that common secured data storage can be maintained to serve a host of e-Governance applications.

By 2021, three-quarters of Singapore companies say they will outsource the majority of their IT infrastructure, of which half will move their infrastructure to the cloud. The top three cost savings, they say, will come from reducing IT infrastructure costs, implementing a cloud and virtualisation strategy as well as standardising their IT infrastructure. Conducted by Vanson Bourne, a research firm, the survey polled 480 IT decision makers in Singapore, Germany, France, United States and United Kingdom. The study was commissioned by Savvis, a cloud infrastructure and hosted IT provider.

With an aim to increase its customer base across the country, Nashik-based ESDS Software Solution Pvt Ltd- a group of web hosting companies based in UK and US, is planning to target all major cities across the country. As part of this, the company has just opened its offices in New Delhi and Pune. The company is also planning to set up its new offices in Mumbai, Bangalore and Indore by the end of the current FY 2011-12

Port Melbourne is attracting strong interest from data centre operators looking to take advantage of the suburb's dual power sources. Knight Frank associate director Ben Hackworthy said over 10,000 sq m of space had been taken up by data centre operators and there were further requirements of about 15,000 s q m.

The Fujitsu Group has announced that it had succeeded in reducing year-on-year power consumption by 20% to 41%, depending on business site, in areas serviced by Tokyo Electric Power Company and Tohoku Electric Power. This marks a substantial increase over the 15% cuts directed by the Japanese government for the July to September 2011 period. In addition, Fujitsu offices and factories serviced by The Kansai Electric Power Company reduced power consumption by over 10%, as directed by the government.

DYXnet, Greater China's leading ICT service provider recorded a strong 30% year-on-year increase in revenue during the first half of 2011. The encouraging performance was driven by outstanding performance from its MPLS VPN service and Contact Centre Outsourcing business. DYXnet's Contact Centre Outsourcing business doubled its revenue in comparison with the first half of 2010, while MPLS VPN grew by 20% during the same period.

CSF, one of the leading providers of data centre facilities and services in South East Asia and the largest provider of data centre services in Malaysia, says that the Group is currently trading in line with current market expectations. New business momentum remains strong and management continues to make significant progress on the delivery of the Group's stated growth strategy.

Technology services firm Fujitsu New Zealand has reported a 40% boost to post-tax profit and says its data centre plans are still alive. Hewlett-Packard announced this month it had axed plans to spend NZ$60 million on a data centre in the Waikato town of Tuakau after speculation about the project's future.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics could pull its eCensus system from IBM's data centre and take it in-house as it tries to maximise the nation's digital population data collection. The eCensus system, which was jointly developed by IBM and the ABS, is run from IBM's data centre at Baulkham Hills, in Sydney's northwest.

Data security solutions company DataMotion Asia-Pacific narrowed its FY11 net loss by 36% as a result of strict cost-cutting efforts. The company posted a net loss for the year of A$953,000, compared to a A$1.5 million loss a year earlier.

Cloud and hybrid hosting provider Voxel has announced it will expand its Asian hosting capacity with the acquisition of an 1,800 sq ft private data centre suite from global telecommunications provider KDDI, located near Singapore's Changi Airport (pictured).

PCCW Solutions has been awarded a HK$362 million contract by the Social Welfare Department to provide an integrated total solution for the Computerised Social Security System II.

Data centre services provider Netmagic plans to add two more data centres to its operations. The company that has seven centres now will add resources to cater to the booming Indian market, senior company official said.

If everything goes well, Manesar in Haryana would be the data centre for Union government’s ambitious project — Aadhaar card or UID card. Already, Haryana State Industrial and Infrastructure Development Corporation has allotted five acres of land for the project. Very soon the foundation stone would be laid for the data centre, said Keshni Anand Arora, deputy director general, regional office, Chandigarh.