Artis Group has gobbled up Sydney-based IT services firm, Help Base, in a bid to rapidly expand its managed services business and reach into the cloud computing arena. “This is our first acquisition after five years of organic growth and a very important one for us as it speeds up our managed services strategy,” Artis Group CEO, Peter Giudes, said. “It also helps us launch our cloud computing strategy.”

Azul Systems, a provider of server appliances for business critical Java applications, has announced record first quarter bookings and revenue for its fiscal year 2011 ending April 30, 2010, with revenue up 64% over the prior quarter. Customers purchasing Azul appliances and services in the quarter included Farmers Insurance, Success Factors, Saks.com, TD Securities, Juniper Networks, Global Collect and many other Global 2000 companies.

AIM-listed iomart Group has secured a £10 million credit facility from Lloyds Banking Group as it continues its strategy to grow its managed hosting business through a combination of organic growth and acquisition. The company, which purchased Maidenhead based server hosting company RapidSwitch in May 2009, looks set to acquire further complementary hosting businesses to bring into the Group.

HP's chief executive Mark Hurd has elaborated on the company's to invest $1bn into its enterprise services unit and cut a net 3,000 jobs. Speaking at the Bank of America Merrill Lynch technology conference, Hurd said HP's services unit, which is dominated by the acquisition of EDS, is now retooling its efforts to focus on research and development of IT infrastructure as a service.

Manx Telecom has been bought by CPS Partners, a specialist international telecommunications management company, and HgCapital, a leading European private equity investor which invests mainly in the telecoms, media, technology, healthcare, industrial, and services sectors. The acquisition, which is valued at £158.5 million, is expected to be completed by the end of June 2010, subject to clearance by Isle of Man Government regulators.

MI5 aims to recruit a senior business executive to head up big changes to its IT operation, ahead of an anticipated squeeze on the intelligence budget. A six-figure salary is on offer for the Security Service's "head of transformation and office of CIO".

A Somerville data centre has filed for protection under Chapter 11 of the bankruptcy code. 2Nb1 LLC listed assets of less than US$1 million and liabilities in the range of US$1 million to US$10 million.

In its filing, 2Nb1 listed its unsecured creditors holding the largest obligations as: Virgil Electric owed US$311,000; Paul Lohnes owed US$173,000; Farina owed US$134,000; Henry F. Owens owed US$115,000; Level3 Communications US$105,000; Richard Jannigan owed US$100,000.

Source: Boston Business Journal

Lexent Metro Connect, a provider of dark fibre networks, has announced plans to extend its dark fibre network into the Telx facility at 100 Delawanna Avenue in Clifton New Jersey. As Lexent's sixth New Jersey colocation centre, 100 Delawanna will expand upon Lexent's fibre routes built between New York and the colocation facilities hosting financial exchanges in Northern New Jersey.

Optimum Lightpath, an Ethernet-based communication solutions company for New York metropolitan area businesses, has announced that it has expanded service into Telx's Clifton, New Jersey colocation and interconnection facility to serve key financial hotspots in New York City and Northern New Jersey.

Semantico, a provider of services and technology for online publishing, has launched dual data centre hosting provision for publishers. Semantico already hosts and manages complex websites for many well known publishers. The new Brighton data centre provides flexibility for those looking for real industry expertise when choosing a hosting provider. Publishers can choose the hardware they need guided by Semantico’s experience, or by their own in-house expertise.

Telx, an interconnection and colocation provider in the strategic markets of North America, recently collaborated with Neutral Tandem to develop Telx Ethernet Exchange. Neutral Tandem is a provider of tandem interconnection services to companies in the fields of wireless, wireline, cable and broadband telephony.

Emulex has agreed to buy ServerEngines, a privately held semiconductor company, in a cash-and-stock deal worth at least US$159 million. The maker of computer data centre technology also said it expects fiscal fourth-quarter adjusted earnings of 15 cents to 17 cents a share, while analysts' estimated 17 cents, according to a poll by Thomson Reuters. Emulex also backed its previous revenue forecast of US$100 million to US$103 million.

Mumbai-headquartered Patni Computer Systems is set to host all its IT infrastructure needs on the cloud. It has put nearly 80% of all its infrastructure needs on a private cloud (only the voice operations such as call centres have data centres, since they are governed by other licenses), and been able to reduce its capex spend by nearly 30%, besides saving another 30% by way of lower power consumption.

Analysts at UBS are giving a boost to a couple specialty REITs today, saying Digital Realty Trust and DuPont Fabros are acting more like growth stocks versus REITs. The firm upgraded both stocks to Buy today.

According to analyst Robert Salisbury, strong secular tailwinds and improving cyclical dynamics have bolstered earnings momentum for the two data centre owners. The firm sees 18% upside in Digital Realty, and raised their price target by US$8 to US$67. The firm sees 24% upside in DuPont Fabros and raised their price target by US$4 to US$29.

The federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has selected Companion Data Services (CDS) to provide data processing and hosting operations for a National Level Repository (NLR) that will track incentive payments to heath care providers that adopt electronic health records and modernize their computer systems.

The first data centre to be solely powered by renewable energy has begun operations in south Wales. Run by Next Generation Data (NGD), the site has become the UK’s largest purchaser of independently generated electricity and the green energy will be responsible for powering the 750,000 sq ft site.

Sentrum, a specialist in data centre solutions, has today released brand new research findings which indicate that the economic upheaval of 2009 will continue to drive changes across the data centre industry in the near and medium term. The report, the third in the series, entitled The Power Struggle, was commissioned by Sentrum with the objective to investigate ongoing data centre developments and the attitude towards them within large UK organisations in the wake of the global downturn.

Alcatel-Lucent has hit its short-term goal, to reduce its carbon footprint by 10% by the end of 2010, a full-year early. The company said the move was aided by significant IT measures. In its Corporate Social Responsibility report for 2009, the networking company said it set the short-term target to reduce its 741,871 metric tons of CO2 emissions, associated with energy use for all its buildings, by 10%, and managed to achieve it by the end of 2009.

Interxion, a European operator of carrier-neutral data centre services, has announced an agreement with AlgoSpan and ALGO Technologies, to offer low latency connectivity and market data services from Interxion’s City of London data centre with immediate effect.

The Singapore Exchange (SGX) has announced it has established a London office to better serve its growing number of European-based customers. The London expansion follows SGX's commitment to invest US$250 million in its Reach initiative.

UnitedLayer, a privately held managed colocation services firm, has announced that it has been selected by Permuto, an online performance advertising company, to be its primary managed hosting partner. UnitedLayer provides colocation and data centre infrastructure services to businesses across the globe.

BendBroadband has announced plans to build and operate a private data centre in NE Bend. Company officials said the facility, known as the BendBroadband Vault, will offer collocation services using a fibre network and energy-efficient power systems.

The 30,000 sq ft facility will be built in three phases. St. Charles Health Systems will be an anchor tenant in the new facility.

Source: My Central Oregon

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XO Communications has announced it has deployed 10 Gbps wavelength services for ACTIV Financial, a global provider of fully managed low latency market data solutions.

The XO solution connects ACTIV's data centres in Chicago and New York and provides the low latency, high-capacity network infrastructure necessary to facilitate the delivery of large volumes of market data to customers around the world.

Source: Market Watch

The Australian Securities Exchange, operator of the Australian futures market, and Equinix, a global data centre company have announced that ASX has deployed its new hosting solution within the Equinix Chicago International Business Exchange data centre. This allows ASX to provide its US-based clients direct access to the Sydney Futures Exchange (SFE), a wholly-owned ASX subsidiary, and its suite of liquid and transparent products.

Virtualising servers, purchasing space in data centres and utilising applications hosted and managed by third parties can have some undeniable advantages: they can increase efficiency, decrease IT-related costs, allow greater mobility and also represent a greener alternative for organisations.

ASX has entered into a commitment to build a new data centre to meet its expanded colocation (primary) services and upgraded business continuity (backup) requirements for the medium to long-term, as foreshadowed in February 2010. The new data centre will be located outside of, but a short distance from, the central business district of Sydney. It is scheduled to be completed in August 2011 and planned to be operational within a few months of that date.

A Dublin-based start-up founded by three friends, Fort Technologies is banking on the disruptive power of cloud computing and its own intuitive management technology to help it outmanoeuvre established management software vendors by empowering service providers to create very sticky customer offerings. Fort's cloud software and service enables the delivery of a premium level of infrastructure where a high level of reliability, security and data storage in the client's local jurisdiction is required.

Dell has unveiled new products, services, management tools and business-ready solutions that position the company to be more of a competitor in the data centre sector. Dell unveiled six new business-ready configurations, which bring together server, storage, networking, and virtualization technology in pre-configured and validated bundles. The solutions integrate with a customer’s existing infrastructure while allowing them to accelerate the benefits of virtualization using either VMware or Microsoft hypervisors.

Castle Access, a Southern California provider of enterprise data centre colocation and managed services, announced today that its 88,000 sq ft flagship enterprise data centre on World Trade Drive in Rancho Bernardo, California, has once again successfully completed a full SAS 70 Type II audit.

The world’s largest ‘carrier’s carrier’ Level 3 Communications is to invest €1 million annually in developing a Metropolitan Area Network in Dublin to connect at least five data centres to serve the growing cluster of internet giants that have set up in Europe’s internet capital.

NaviSite reported net income available to common shareholders for the third quarter of US$17.3 million compared to a net loss of US$3.2 million in the year-ago quarter. Net loss from continuing operations in the third quarter was US$0.7 million as compared to a loss of US$1.8 million in the comparable period in fiscal year 2009.

Revenues for the quarter increased 1.5% to US$31.4 million from US$31.0 million in the prior-year quarter. Excluding the revenue from the non-renewal of the Los Angeles data centre revenue increased 4% over the prior year.

Project Manager- construction

The client is a multinational data centre company who are currently going through a number of construction projects around Europe. Currently they have an immediate requirement for a project manager for a brownfield project in Switzerland.

Source: Career Structure
 

Cincinnati Bell has announced the completion of its acquisition of data centre operator CyrusOne from ABRY Partners in a cash transaction valued at approximately US$525 million. CyrusOne is the largest data centre colocation company in Texas.

euNetworks Group has announced the appointment of John Franklin to the management team, taking up the role of Chief Operating Officer for the company. This appointment is effective 14 June 2010, based at the London headquarters of the business.

GTS Central Europe has concluded and agreement to acquire Interware, a key player in Hungary’s data centre services market.

The buyer already has a major presence in Hungary through local subsidiary GTS-Datanet; therefore the deal requires Competition Office approval. The transaction is expected to complete in Q3 2010; financial details have not been made public.

Source: Portfolio

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Equinix, a provider of global data centre services, has announced that Eric Schwartz, president of Equinix in Europe, will present at the NASDAQ OMX 24th Investor Program in London on Wednesday, June 23, 2010.

Source: Equinix
 

Level 3 Communications has announced it will now provide high-speed IP (HSIP) services for leading Paris-based online real estate service SeLoger.com Group, including all four of the company's websites. The company operates France's most extensive website for classified real estate ads and has diversified its business to include a number of related sister sites that provide services for new and prospective buyers, including immostreet.com, bellesdemeures.com and agorabiz.com.

The Telx Group, an interconnection and colocation provider in strategic North American markets, has announced that it closed a US$175 million senior secured credit facility, including a US$25 million revolving line of credit.

A permanent position has become available where the role is provide high level technical support on all matters relating to networking and security in corporate and customer networks. The candidate will also be required to be involved in the maintenance and growth of colocation facilities.

Responsibilities: Take overall pro-active responsibility for technical support and network issues. Be involved in development of any new features and/or products within network environment. Configuration of routers, switches, firewalls and load balances.

Source:InfoGrok

School is out for summer, but it's time for IT executives to hit the books to prepare for a 2011 data centre refresh that will deliver cost savings enabled by virtualization and flatter architectures with lower latency.

A newly-launched UK company has developed a piece of system management software that could help significantly reduce the carbon footprint of the information communication technology (ICT) sector, tackling the emissions and energy efficiency of even the smallest of data centres.

NextiraOne, a communications services company, is teaming up with North Bristol NHS Trust to deliver a seminar on ICT infrastructure and Data Centre technology including a site visit to a live Data Centre environment. Aimed at addressing the problem of spiraling energy costs and the desire to meet carbon reduction objectives and Government guidelines, the NextiraOne-led seminar is leading the way in demonstrating how to achieve energy and cost-efficient ICT infrastructure.

A data centre and fibre optic cabling company has bought a 30,000 sq ft, single-story office building at 1881 Valley View Lane in Farmers Branch. Data Center Systems, now based at 14802 Venture Drive in Dallas, bought the building this week. It plans to take occupancy of the facility by the end of the year.

The purchase price was not disclosed, but a source close to the deal said it sold for about US$1.2 million, or US$40 per square foot. The asking price was US$2 million.

Source: Dallas Business Journal

Colocation provider Telx has announced that it has completed a SAS 70 Type II report covering 12 of its data centres in New York, New Jersey, Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Miami, Phoenix, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

The report was issued following a thorough independent audit of Telx's control processes in 12 facilities. It demonstrates the company's leadership in operational excellence and its commitment to providing efficient security and control processes for its customers.

Source: The WHIR

Digital Realty Trust, the world's largest wholesale data centre provider, has signed a new 15-year lease agreement with an affiliate of Terremark Worldwide to house Terremark's NAP of Amsterdam in a new build-to-suit project to be developed by Digital Realty Trust. Digital Realty Trust also announced that it has entered into a definitive purchase and sale agreement to acquire the site where the new facility is to be constructed.

Greater flexibility, a variety of clients and the impact of the Gershon report have allowed the Canberra Data Centre to provide data facilities for 16 different government agencies.

Managing director of the centre, Greg Boorer in this interview spoke about developments the centre has made since it was opened in 2008. "It's a brand new data centre and one of its attractions is we've never been saddled with old architecture we needed to squeeze more life out of. We were able to start with a blank canvas and it achieved best practice from day one.

3Sixty Holdings, a technology-focused holding company, has announced that it has acquired AIS Network Corporation, a managed and cloud hosting provider, from Founder and President Daniel Lundahl.

According to the company, headquartered in Chicago, the 17-year-old AIS Network is recognized as a pioneer in managed hosting technologies. Lundahl will remain President of AIS Network's Midwest operations and will retain a significant equity stake in the company.

Source: Web Hosting Info

Technology giant IBM’s hardware division, it appears, is back in business, with some help from India. The 2010 first quarter earnings reveal IBM’s hardware and software businesses are growing faster than its services business, which nevertheless remains its largest division, contributing 62.3% to the quarter’s revenue. However, year-on-year, technology services was up by 5.8%, while growth in business services declined.

Interxion, a European provider of carrier-neutral colocation data centre services, has released its unaudited numbers for the three months ended 31 March 2010.

Highlights:

LAMDA Hellix, a subsidiary of LAMDA Development, won the prestigious Best European Green Data Center Initiative Award during the Data Centers Europe 2010 Conference held in Nice, France on 24 & 25 June.

Awarded as Best Regional Data Center Operator 2009 in Europe, LAMDA Hellix was short listed for the second consequent year among the top companies of the industry, such as Equinix, TelecityGroup, Interxion, Microsoft, etc.

The 6th Data Centres Europe Awards took place in Sophia Antipolis on Thursday 24th June at a Gala Dinner attended by executives from more than thirty countries. The ceremony was presided over by the chair of the Awards Judges panel, Ashley Davis, managing director at JPMorgan. The following awards were announced:

Colocation provider BlueSquare Data has achieved its third accreditation from the International Organisation for Standardisation after receiving the ISO 14001:2004 standard for Environmental Management Systems. The certificate is awarded to businesses that have successfully implemented an Environmental Management System to measure and document their environmental impact.

Digital Realty Trust, a leading wholesale data centre provider, plans to increase the number of staff at its European headquarters in Blanchardstown, Dublin, by 15% in the next year. Bernard Geoghegan, the firm's Senior VP of international operations, notes: "Our head office operations and activities in Dublin have gone from strength to strength since our establishment in 2006."

DRT owns three data centres in the greater Dublin area. It provides solutions from data centre design and construction to comprehensive data centre management programmes.

HM Revenue & Customs has frozen spending on IT, according to a report from the National Audit Office. The report looks at the efficiency of the collection of national insurance and found that improvements to some of the systems are not going to be possible in the coming financial year.