According to the Cisco Cloud Index, more than 50% of computing workloads in data centres will be cloud-based by 2014, and global cloud traffic will grow more than 12 times by 2015, to 1.6 zettabytes per year - the equivalent of over four days of business-class video for every person on Earth. Based on these trends, Cisco announced it has updated its switching portfolio with 100 Gigabit and 40 GE capabilities, the next speed limits for networking.

Colt, Europe’s leading information delivery platform, has been awarded the Uptime Institute’s Management & Operations Stamp of Approval for its London 3 site. Colt is the first data centre operator in Europe to be accredited, demonstrating its leadership in the industry.

Julian Kudritzki, Vice President at the Uptime Institute commented, "Colt's M&O approved London 3 site management not only deserves congratulations, but einforces Colt’s commitment to excellence in operations." 

Inside the shell of an office building in downtown Omaha, a local company is transforming the guts of the facility into a commercial data centre. The facility at 1623 Farnam St. already is home to the city's "Carrier Hotel," a place where all major telecommunications companies in Nebraska meet, connect and swap traffic through a convergence of underground cables in a "meet me room."

Consonus, in partnership with Altruent Systems, successfully completed data centre relocation for a national financial services provider. Consonus provided IT consulting to complete the time-sensitive move to ensure minimal downtime of critical infrastructure.

The Metropolitan Airports Commission plans to build a US$15 million data centre at Minneapolis/St. Paul International Airport.

MAC is soliciting bids from firms that want to construct the 10,700-sq ft facility, which will be located in the cargo area at the airport. Bids are due Feb. 14 and contracts will be awarded in March. Work on the facility will begin in April. MAC now has about 110 data rooms at the airport. It wants to build the data centre in order to consolidate those operations into one facility, said Alan Howell, who is managing the data centre project. 

A fully operational Cayman Enterprise City officially launched last week with an event at the Royal Palms.  Premier McKeeva Bush spoke about how Cayman Enterprise City rapidly became a reality after he announced he had signed a memorandum of understanding to create a technology-based special economic zone at the Cayman Business Outlook conference in January 2011.  “I am delighted to announce today that Cayman Enterprise City, Cayman’s first special economic zone, is open for business,” he said.

Kenya Data Networks is to begin leasing storage capacity at its new Sameer Park facility in Nairobi. This is expected to open a new revenue stream to KDN and boost its earnings, which have fallen in the past year, according to local media reports.

DOW Networks have announced that it will be designing and building a new data centre to provide increased disaster recovery and redundancy for its call centre services and international toll free clients.

Tulip Data Center Services, a subsidiary of Tulip Telecom has launched 'Tulip Data City,' Asia's largest data centre in Bengaluru, worth Rs 900 crore.  The Tulip Data City is a multi-tiered facility built to tier 4 and tier 3 standard, and is expected to save close to 35 MW power at full capacity. The company has been implementing sales and marketing programme to achieve its target of booking 25% capacity by the end of FY12 and also expects a return of Rs 1,000 crores in the next three years.

In a picturesque spot overlooking San Francisco Bay, the US Department of Energy's Berkeley Lab has begun building a new computing centre that will one day house exascale systems. The DOE doesn't know what an exascale system will look like. The types of chips, the storage, the networking and programming methods that will go into these systems are all works in progress. DOE is expected to deliver a report by the end of this week outlining a plan for reaching exascale computing by 1919-1920 and its expected cost.

New South Wales state water authority, Sydney Water, is looking for contractors to carry out a refurbishment of its data centre in Homebush, Sydney. The facility was built in 1993 to ensure that the authority’s critical production systems were maintained in a stable environment.

According to tender documents, the project will include the replacement of a raised data centre floor, maintenance on the electrical switchboard and uninterruptible power supply (UPS) board without disrupting power to the IT environment and an upgrade of the current building codes and standards.

Entra Property plans to build one of the most safe, environmentally friendly and energy-and cost-efficient data centres in Norway. The data centre is to be developed in collaboration with Hewlett-Packard Norway. The Greenfield Data Center located in the Fet municipality in Akershus,.

French internet host OVH has begun work on its first data centre in North America in Beauharnois, Canada, around 50 km from Montreal, Les Echos reports. The CAD 100 million facility will be able to host 80,000 servers within three years. It will be of the same type as the Roubaix 4 data centre opened last June at the company's headquarters in Roubaix, northern France.

Dell Services has opened a new technology centre in Quincy, Washington, that will provide customers in North America access to cloud technologies and IT outsourcing services. The opening is part of Dell's ongoing commitment to develop new cloud-based services, solutions and delivery options.

Equinix, a provider of global data centre services, has announced plans to build a new International Business Exchange data centre in Washington, D.C. Targeted to open in early 2013, the first phase is expected to cost US$88 million in expansion capital, and will have space for 1,200 cabinets with capacity for an additional 1,800 cabinets in future phases. The company also announced it will begin construction on phase two of its DC10 data centre for Business Suites, which is expected to be completed in Q4. Phase two of DC10 is expected to cost US$21 million in expansion capital.

Vantage Data Centers, the leading pure-play wholesale data centre developer, announced that it has entered into a US$135 million revolving credit facility with a premier group of lenders. Vantage will use the funds for accelerated development of data centre campuses in Santa Clara, California, and in Quincy, Washington.

The lending group includes Royal Bank of Canada as the Administrative Agent, KeyBank, and Bank of America as Co-Syndication Agents, Barclays Bank, Raymond James Bank, FSB and UBS Loan   inance as participants.

More than 100 jobs and a US$100 million investment could be on its way to Cleveland County, assuming county and city leaders approve the unnamed company’s incentive package. A joint session between Cleveland County Commissioners and Kings Mountain City Council is set for 4 p.m. Tuesday at Cleveland Community College to discuss incentives.

Apple's massive North Carolina data centre will be powered by the nation's largest end-user-owned solar array, the company has revealed a report on its environmental footprint. The facility, which is being constructed in Maiden, N.C., has been awarded LEED Platinum certification from the U.S. Green Building Council, the company said in its report. "We know of no other data centre of comparable size that has achieved this level of LEED certification," the company said in its report. "Our goal is to run
the Maiden facility with high percentage renewable energy mix." 

Newport headquartered Certus IT is hosting a series of free business seminars to help companies keep abreast of the latest IT developments. In partnership with Dell and Microsoft, the half-day seminars will be held at NGD Europe, Next Generation Data Limited’s 750,000 square feet mega data centre in Newport where Certus IT’s new data centre business is based.

Data centre operator TelecityGroup has unveiled its latest facility at Joule House in Manchester. The data centre – Telecity’s fourth in the city – is due to open this spring in Trafford Park. Telecity said Joule House would significantly increase its capacity in Greater Manchester, helping to attract international businesses and jobs to the area.

US data centre service provider, CoreLink Data Centers, has announced the completion of an SSAE 16 audit at its colocation facilities. The Statement on Standards for Attestation Engagements (SSAE) No. 16 addresses a service organization's, such as a data centre, internal controls. Issued by the American Institute of Certified Public Accounts, it is considered the authoritative guidance standard for service organizations

Sentrum, a specialist in data centre solutions, has said that the UK data centre sector is showing a strong response to increased demands from UK businesses for more flexibility as companies battle to control spiralling data storage costs. The growing need for increased levels of data storage comes hand-in-hand with a new pressure on businesses to manage ‘Big Data’ stores as cost-effectively as possible. 

Hospital giant HCA Holdings plans to build a data centre in Antioch that is expected to generate 155 jobs over the next five years. HCA officials announced their plans for the US$200 million facility in The Crossings area alongside Gov. Bill Haslam, Economic and Community Development Commissioner Bill Hagerty and Nashville Mayor Karl Dean.

The company last summer bought 53 acres off Interstate 24 for US$2.2 million. Its facility there will replace its West End centre and join other hubs in Fort Worth, Orlando and Anchorage.

Colt results highlights included:

Transformed our organisation structure to drive revenue through three customer-centric units

Introduced innovative, market leading compute and data centre services for both our enterprise and indirect customers and continued to lead in pan-European Ethernet network services

Increased our vertical sector capabilities through the acquisition of MarketPrizm

Datacentres 2012, Europe’s premier content driven event for end users, telcos, datacenter operators, cloud players, energy specialists, solutions providers and companies engaged in the sector, has launched with the global specialist in energy management, Schneider Electric, as Patron of the event.  

Jones Lang LaSalle has been selected by Steel ORCA as the leasing agent for the Digital Utility Center, its 700,000 sq ft, mission critical data centre facility in Fairless Hills, PA. Steel ORCA is developing a two-story, 700,000 sq ft data centre facility on a site that resides within a 4,000-acre gated campus. The mission critical facility will comprise more than 300,000 sq ft of white space and is capable of providing power output up to 100 megawatts.

Rackspace is set to build another data centre in the UK, rather than expanding its reach across Europe. The company’s recently appointed managing director of international, Taylor Rhodes, told Cloud Pro it would be better for business to expand in the UK before venturing further afield.  “Plans are not set, but I would think in the next two to three years we will build another data centre in the UK,” he said.

An information and communication technology hub is to be developed at Nasrec in Gauteng, the provincial government has said. Several major international and local investors had committed themselves to the development, which would become an ICT manufacturing centre for the country, said economic development MEC Qedani Mahlangu. Some of the biggest investors were from China. “We are working with the minister of communications to iron out the last few problems,” Mahlangu told reporters at the Gauteng legislature.