As part of its ongoing pledge to significantly reduce its carbon emissions by 80% by 2050, Cable & Wireless Worldwide has successfully closed Thameside, its earth/satellite location centre in London.

Telecity Group, the provider of network independent data centres, has announced its results for the six months ended 30 June 2010. Revenue up 13.9% to £93.7 million with constant currency revenue growth of 14.7%, EBITDA up 29.0% to £37.9 million and adjusted profit after tax up 30.4% £17.6 million.

Far EasTone Telecommunications (FET) has established an Internet data centre farm to provide cloud computing services to business users in Taiwan.

The IDC Farm, the first of its kind in Taiwan, consists of eight IDCs around Taiwan which are integrated through a 10Gbps dedicated fibre-optic line, FET indicated. This is the first step for FET to operate businesses related to cloud computing, the company noted.

Source: DigiTimes
 

One-third of the country's commercial banks, having real time online banking system, are yet to set up adequate backup support to keep the record of millions of accounts' information during natural disasters.

The US Veterans Administration is making upward of US$12 billion in IT contracts available to businesses over the next five years, as part of an effort to modernize its operations. The VA spends about US$3.5 billion annually in IT, a figure that Input, a government market research, estimates is increasing at 10% annually as demand for veterans' services increases, said Kevin Plexico, an analyst at the Reston, Va.-based firm.

Total data centre capacity in the Greater China region (comprising of key cities Hong Kong, Guangzhou, Shanghai and Taipei) is expected to be dominated by Taiwan with some 40% total share, according to a new report by consulting firm BroadGroup.

ISO standard containers are out. Air-cooling is in. Those are just a couple of the findings from a just-published Microsoft white paper, entitled “A Holistic Approach to Energy Efficiency in Data Centres.” The author of the paper, Microsoft Engineer Dileep Bhandarkar, includes some of the Microsoft Global Foundation Services’ learnings about how best to populate and cool cloud data centres.

Allstream, a unit of MTS Allstream, made a big bet this year to expand its 30,000 km national fibre network and that bet is paying off with 46 new contracts signed during the second quarter alone.

Wholesale communications provider Entanet has launched its much anticipated Annex M service which provides customers with an increased broadband upload speed and resellers with new revenue opportunities.

Japan's role as the hub for telecommunications traffic between the United States and Asia is being challenged by a new generation of undersea fibre-optic cables which bypass the country completely. The submarine fibre-optic cable industry is seeing its first major boom since the collapse of the "dot-com" Internet bubble of the late 1990s and early 2000s, and three major new cables are redrawing the map of telecommunications links between the Asia and North America.

Mobile telecommunications operator MTN has unveiled its R22-million, 2-MW trigeneration plant, which would power a new building housing a data centre and a test switch centre at its head office campus in Fairland, Johannesburg. The trigeneration plant is powered by methane gas, which is piped over 800 km from Sasol's Mozambique gas fields to Egoli Gas in Johannesburg, and then to the company's office, MTN South Africa MD Karel Pienaar explained.

Equinix, a provider of global data centre services, has announced the opening of the first phase of its third International Business Exchange data centre in Atlanta.

Mellanox Technologies, a supplier of high-performance, end-to-end connectivity solutions for data centre servers and storage systems, has announced that its industry-leading end-to-end 40Gb/s InfiniB and connectivity products, including ConnectX-2 adapter cards, BridgeX gateway system, 40Gb/s InfiniBand switches and cables, provide the high-performance server and storage networking for the new Dell/Cambridge High-Performance Computing Solution Centre.

DuPont Fabros Technology, has reported results for the quarter ended June 30, 2010. All per share results are reported on a fully diluted basis. The company said that it has executed eight new triple-net leases and renewed one triple-net lease totalling 17.66 megawatts, representing approximately US$337 million of total contract value over the respective lease terms.

Pent up global demand for massive cloud computing speed and capacity is powering the construction of colossal new data centres, but most are a year or more away from being operational. South Hill Business and Technology Centre, a project of The Benaroya Company along with its hand-picked team of gold-standard experts, is in the final stages of commissioning and will be fully operational and ready for occupancy in the next two weeks.

VanillaSoft has announced that it has completed its planned infrastructure expansion, and part of that expansion included bringing a new data centre on line. VanillaSoft selected Terremark Worldwide as a trusted partner for its North American hosting facility.

Diversified industrial manufacturer Eaton has announced it has agreed to acquire Wright Line Holding, subject to regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Based in Worcester, Mass., Wright Line provides customized enclosures, rack systems, and air flow management systems to store, power, and secure mission-critical IT data centre electronics. Over the last 12 months the company had sales of approximately US$101 million and has more than 350 employees.

Dell has won a major storage solution deal with Ryanair in a three-way competition against HP and IBM Network Appliances. The deal is worth over €470k. The airline's Dublin-based IT headquarters serves over 7,000 employees at 32 bases in 26 countries, so constant access to e-mail and other critical applications is vital.

What's left of Lehman Brothers is asking a bankruptcy court judge for permission to pay US$2.5 million to get out of a 59,300 sq ft data centre lease with 85 Tenth Ave. that extends to the end of 2013. Lehman says without the approval it would pay US$300,000 per month or a total of US$12.485 million for the seventh-floor communications hub that it no longer uses.

Building owner Related has agreed to the early termination, but only if it gets a tenant to fill the space. A CB Richard Ellis team has it on the market and declined comment.

Data centre solutions provider, CoreLink Data Centers, is pleased to announce the launch of their Summer Sizzle Promotion. CoreLink’s summer savings package includes a 25% discount on full cabinet colocation for a one-year term, full locking cabinets with switched and meter PDUs included, fast Ethernet cross connect, 20 Mbps bandwidth and 24x7 support and remote hands.

Atria Networks , which provides wide-area networking in Ontario along hydro rights of way, is expanding its reach into Haliburton County, roughly 200 km northeast of Toronto. Markham, Ont.-based Atria announced this week it has acquired the telecommunications network assets of Xittel Telecommunications Inc. of Trois Rivieres, Quebec. The companies did not publish the purchase price.

HP has announced it was recently selected by the nonprofit Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association (AFCEA International) to dramatically reduce the physical and carbon footprint of the organization’s infrastructure while enabling its computing resources to grow.

SAVVIS Quarterly Report for the period ended 2010-06-30. Savvis has a market cap of US$999.1 million; its shares were traded at around US18.2 with and P/S ratio of 1.1. Savvis had an annual average earning growth of 2.9% over the past 5 years.

Source:Guru Focus

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The Seattle area, rife with hydroelectric power, is about to get another data centre. The South Hill Business and Technology Center, in Puyallup, is now open for business and will be ready for occupancy in the next two weeks.

The data centre is composed of three pre-existing buildings, one of which has been renovated to house thousands of computer servers, miles of wires and critical cooling systems. A second building is currently available in cold-shell condition and is ready to be built out. There is also room on the campus for containerized server farms.

The J.R. Simplot data centre management team wanted to improve energy efficiency to meet corporate green initiatives. They also wanted to increase IT rack density, be better able to troubleshoot equipment and put in systems to manage potential risks.

This Case Study explores how they installed energy management software and intelligent rack PDUs with outlet-level power monitoring to add remote energy management, power monitoring of individual devices, environmental monitoring, and sophisticated and accurate power usage reports and analytics.

Grubb & Ellis, an advisory firm for commercial real estate, has released its mid-year data centre report for 2010. This report highlights a number of trends, drivers, and other facts relevant to the current data centre market. The report, officially entitled “Grubb & Ellis National Data Center Practice Mid-Year Report,” is available on the web and also at the National Data Center Practice blog.

Source: Data Centre journal

Retail Specialist Officers Club selects C24 to handle the hosting and management of its critical business applications for its 115 shops based around the UK. Officers Club is a leading mens fashion retailer based throughout the UK with 110 stores nationwide and growing has announced that C24; the hosting and application delivery specialist, has won its account to host its mission critical applications that serve its 115 retail outlets across the UK.

IBM is defending its performance in an US$863 million data centre contract with Texas that the state has threatened to terminate. The company told the Texas Department of Information Resources that it wants to meet with the agency to salvage the contract, which requires the company to merge the data centres of 28 state agencies into two facilities.

IBM executive Cynthia McLean defended the company's performance and denied IBM is responsible for the problems the state outlined in a letter last month claiming the company has failed to live up to its promises.

NaviSite has announced that the Special Committee of the Board of Directors has unanimously rejected the July 12, 2010 unsolicited, conditional proposal by Atlantic Investors to purchase all of the outstanding shares of common stock of NaviSite not owned by Atlantic for US$3.05 per share.

The new structure planned for 111 E. Cermak Rd. is the first building in the area constructed specifically as a data centre. Chicago-based JRM Technology plans to build a 315,000 sq ft data centre at 111 E. Cermak Rd., just two blocks from the 1.1 million sq ft data carrier site at 350 E. Cermak Rd. in the former RR Donnelly printing plant.

JRM selected McHugh Construction as design-build contractor, ESD as lead architect and engineer, Archideas as consulting architect, and CS Associates as structural engineer.

Source: Gazette Chicago

The bar for what qualifies as a fast connection or "low latency" networking has always been higher in finance than in other areas of corporate networking. It's never been quite this high, however. The increased use of innovative algorithmic-trading strategies has levied unprecedented pressure on financial firms to seek out and remove any possible delays that could threaten the successful execution of automated buy and sell orders.

Eighteen months ago, Holyoke’s Mastex Industries shut its doors, resulting in the layoff of 80 workers and delivering another blow to the Paper City’s long-standing reputation as one of the region’s thriving industrial centres. On Monday, the seeds of hope were sown for an economic revival when Gov. Deval L. Patrick named the hollow factory, which once churned out fabric for automobile manufacturers such as Ford and General Motors, as the site for a proposed US$100 million high-performance computing centre.

Michigan Millers Mutual Insurance Company, a provider of auto, homeowners, business, and agribusiness insurance, has improved their IT disaster recovery capabilities and backup recovery response time by moving from IBM’s facility to Online Tech’s SAS 70 certified data centres.

Thailand has defined its vision to increase and improve its use of ICT to help develop a stronger economy as well as boost social equality and environmental friendliness by 2020, as part of the Smart Thailand concept. Speaking at a public hearing hosted by Ministry of Information and Communication Technology, Chadamas Thuvasethakul, Nectec's deputy executive director , said ICT can be used to strengthen the kingdom's economy and reduce the social gap by boosting the public's knowledge and the quantity of smart human capital through increasing the availability of high-speed Internet.

Equinix, a provider of global data centre services, has announced that Voxel, a provider of scalable, hybrid Internet infrastructure, has selected Equinix to support the expansion of its VoxCLOUD service. Voxel deployed its new cloud offering within Equinix International Business Exchange data centres due to the superior performance Equinix has provided in the 10 years that Voxel has been a customer.

To improve the company’s overall financial flexibility and supplement a recent equity offering, critical power solutions provider Active Power, has secured a new multi-year credit facility through Silicon Valley Bank. The facility provides a line of credit up to US$12.5 million and replaces a US$6 million credit facility with Silicon Valley Bank set to expire in the fourth quarter of 2010.

Provider of information technology solutions TravelSky announced yesterday that it has renewed its commitment to Unisys to support transaction peaks driven by China's growing aviation sector. The US$43 million deal includes the Unisys USAS Passenger Services Solution, two ClearPath Dorado Model 790 mainframes, additional metered processing capability and infrastructure management suite and maintenance services.

Data centre and carrier security testing provider Arbor Networks is slated to be acquired by Tektronix Communications, according to the latter firm, which said it has signed a definitive agreement and expects to complete the deal in three to six weeks.

Tektronix, a unit of Danaher, provides communications testing and network intelligence solutions. Arbor fits neatly into Tektronix's portfolio of companies and is Tektronix-Danaher's first acquisition of a tech firm on the East Coast.

Source: Information Week

Emerson Network Power (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd expects to build two to three more data centres for their telecommunication clients next year. "Roughly, a data centre would cost about RM10 million to set up. Our core business today are currently from the telecommunications sector, banking and finance, and Internet data centres. "The company is moving towards vertical engagement, where we are definitely going into industrial markets like the oil and gas sector, which is still underserved in our business," its managing director Henry Ng Loo Heng told a media briefing.

Network and application services provider Net4India has raised Rs. 8 crore from QS India Hosting, an investment arm of the international private equity firm Quilvest Group. The company had previously raised US$3.19 million from Madison India Capital Advisors and US$1.87 million in second round from Granite Hill India Opportunities Fund.

Based in Noida, Net4 focuses on providing services to businesses and its offerings include Enterprise Internet Services, Data Centre Solutions, VoIP Solutions, and Enterprise Messaging & Hosting Solutions.

Internet Initiative Japan has announced its consolidated financial results for the three months ended June 30, 2010. Highlights of First Quarter FY2010 Financial Results

Revenues were JPY15,813 million (US$179 million), down 0.1% YoY. While connectivity and outsourcing services steadily grew, systems integration decreased mainly affected by the scale-down of a contract from a certain large contract.

Source: DMN

High Point Regional Health System will invest about US$5 million on a new data center to keep up with the growing technology needs of health care. Darrell Deaton, vice president of planning and information at High Point Regional, said the health system has not updated its data centre since building a second one in its heart center about a decade ago.

Carat Networks, a global IT hosting service provider, has announced it has formed a strategic infrastructure partnership with Ubiquity Server Solutions, which will operate Carat Networks’ core network in Ontario and maintain local network gear in its data centre facility.

The Environment Agency is reminding UK data centre operators that they have until 31 September to sign up to the Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) Energy Efficiency Scheme. The legislation, which came into force on 1 April, requires firms to buy allowances for their annual carbon emissions. Charges are capped at £12 per tonne and the worst offenders will be “named and shamed” in an energy-efficiency league table.

Primus Telecommunications Group, a global provider of advanced facilities-based communication solutions, announced results for the second quarter ended June 30, 2010. For the second quarter 2010 net revenue was US$205.4 million, an increase of 5.0% versus the prior year and Adjusted EBITDA was US$23.6 million, an increase of 14.2% versus the prior year.

C7 Data Centers, a national provider of colocation, disaster recovery, and virtualization solutions, announced today that it has raised an additional US$9 million in growth capital. This round was led by Canopy Ventures and debt financing from Zions First National Bank.

C7 plans to use this additional capital to further fuel organic growth, fund additional phases for its data centres, and allow for new expansion facilities. With four data centres in Utah, C7 presents the most comprehensive data centre offering for local, national, and multi-national companies.

IT services firm CSG has announced its results for the 2010 financial year to 30 June, with strong revenue growth buoyed by its acquisitions. Since 2007, the firm's IT services and print services acquisitions slipped revenues of A$34 million and A$69.4 million into CSG's coffers, although organic growth contributed to 41% of the company's increasing revenues.

Internap Network Services, a provider of end-to-end Internet business products and services, has announced the opening of a 7,500- sq ft expansion of its Seattle-area colocation facility located at 3355 S. 120th Place in Tukwila, Washington in the Sabey Intergate campus.

An improvement was witnessed in the IT services sector during the second quarter of 2010, with 14% more deals announced compared to the previous three-month period. Research conducted by IT analyst Ovum indicated that the April to June quarter was the best for 12 months in terms of deal volumes.

Onyx Group, the fast-growing risk management and data security firm, is planning a £2 million investment in its operation in Scotland and it said it will add 15 jobs this year, taking its headcount north of the border to 65. Hugh Gillen, managing director of Onyx Scotland, which operates the largest commercial data centre north of the border in Edinburgh, also said it was on the look-out for further Scottish acquisitions and that the company could spend a “seven- figure sum” – up to £10 million – on the purchase.

Slovak Telekom and IBM will build a data centre in Bratislava. The five-story building with 1,200 sq m is designed with a focus on safety standards and green IT principles, which should bring significant energy savings on cooling and power supply. Finalising the project is foreseen in 2011.

IBM won the tender for project delivery and prepared the concept, design and infrastructure of the new data centre. The green data centre for Slovak Telekom will be the biggest in Slovakia.

Source: Trading Markets

The federal government has agreed to provide more than US$15 million over three years to augment telecommunications in Western Virginia through the installation of hundreds of additional miles of fibre-optic cable allowing for speedy Internet service.

There's US$9.2 million to enable Floyd-based Citizens Telephone Cooperative to expand fibre access in the New River and Roanoke valleys and US$6.9 million for similar upgrades in Rockbridge County, according to a major grant announcement Wednesday by the Commerce Department.

Source: The Roanoke Times

Intel, the chip maker, has turned into Intel, the security specialist. Making one of most eye-catching moves in its 42-year history, Intel announced Thursday that it planned to acquire McAfee for US$7.68 billion in cash. Under the terms of the deal, Intel will pay US$48 a share in cash, a 60% premium over McAfee’s Wednesday closing stock price of US$29.93.

The deal makes Intel a major player in the security software and services market. As such, Intel will shed some of its identity as a component supplier and climb higher up the technology food chain.

An Indiana technology company has received tax abatement approval for a nearly US$30 million project. Lightbound is planning to build a high-powered data centre in Indianapolis. The project is expected to retain 32 jobs and create 35 others. It was reported in May that the building's major tenant will be email marketing company ExactTarget.

Lightbound plans to spend US$24 million to construct the new centre and another US$4.9 million in new hardware and related IT equipment.

Source: Inside Indiana Business

Juniper Networks is said to be eyeing metro Atlanta as a site for a research and development lab - an investment that could top US$100 million. The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based networking gear maker is scouting for about 100,000 sq ft of data centre space and has looked at four sites in the region, according to a source familiar with Juniper’s plans.

The company declined comment.

Source: Atlanta Business Chronicle

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On the back of securing a contract to supply its POD container data centre to the iVEC Informatics Facility at Murdoch University in WA as part of a bid for the Square Kilometre Array project, HP is reporting “tens” of other deals for its POD systems in the pipeline.

The vendor launched its first operational POD (which stands for Performance Optimised Datacentre) for the Asia-Pacific region at partner, Verb DC’s facility in the North Wyong Industrial Park on the Central Coast area of NSW.

Source: Computer World

TierPoint, the data centre services provider in the Inland Northwest has announced enhancements to its network infrastructure. The TierPoint network capacity has been upgraded to a full 10 Gigabits per second (10Gbps) infrastructure. This will push TierPoint’s Internet capacity to over 50Gbps.

Digital Realty Trust, the world’s largest wholesale data centre provider, has announced that it completed the acquisition of two fully leased data centre properties for a purchase price of US$50.3 million.

Data centres could start moving overseas as a result of hikes in the cost of energy, it has been suggested with a number of operators expressing concern about higher electricity prices. Roger Keenan, managing director of City Lifeline, which operates a data centre in the City of London, said some data centres need a lot of computation power and therefore consume a lot of energy.

"This might be geological computation, with lots of number crunching, little communications and few staff," he explained. "These kinds of data centres may leave the UK."

Australian data centre managers will continue their investment in data centre infrastructure in the year ahead according to a survey conducted by STULZ Australia at this month’s Data Centre Strategics and Green Technology conference staged in Sydney.

The survey found that 60% of data centre managers plan to increase their investment in IT infrastructure over the next 12 months and more than a quarter (27%) of respondents will channel these funds towards projects which drive down the cost of running their data centre operations.

Source: PR Wire

British IT firm Redstone is raising £8.5 million in a rescue deal brokered by new management team Ian Smith and Tony Weaver, which includes a settlement with its creditor Eckoh. The company, which supplies managed IT services to City banks, is raising about £7 million in a placing and subscription of shares, while it is also raising £1.5 million of new debt, which along with £3 million of existing debt will be converted into equity.

The European Commission has cleared under the EU Merger Regulation the proposed acquisition of Chloride, a UK-based electrical equipment supplier, by the US company Emerson. The Commission concluded that the acquisition would not significantly impede effective competition in the European Economic Area (EEA) or any substantial part of it.

Interxion, a leading European provider of carrier-neutral colocation data centre services, today released its unaudited numbers for the three months ended 30 June 2010. Highlights included Revenue increased by 19% to €50.4 million (Q2 2009: €42.5 million) and Net profit of €4.0 million (Q2 2009: profit €8.2 million).

Source: Interxion
 

TierPoint, the premier carrier-class and carrier-neutral data centre services provider in the Inland Northwest, has announced a new US$8.2 million "green" data centre project, known as TierPoint 3. Funding for the project was secured through debt financing from Bank of America/Merrill Lynch (US$4.1 million) and Evergreen Business Capital and the Small Business Administration (US$3.1 million), in addition to a US$1.0 million infusion by TierPoint.

UK-based IT services and solutions provider 2 has announced increased turnover in the past financial year. Turnover for 2009 stood at £200 million, a £6 million increase on the previous year. The organisation is in the process of integrating recent acquisition Morse, an IT services and technology company.

Web hosting provider Rackspace Hosting has announced it has leased 101,000 sq ft of office space in Middlesex, England to serve as its headquarters in the Europe, Middle East, Africa region. Rackspace signed a lease with Hyde Park GP for approximately 101,000 sq ft in Middlesex, according to the SEC filing.

Segro posted a slight rise in the value of its properties, sending its shares lower on Thursday as the industrial property landlord aims to restart new developments amid returning interest from potential tenants. Segro, which has about two-thirds of its properties in the UK and the rest across continental Europe, said its portfolio value grew 1.4% in the first half, with a 2.5%t rise in the UK offsetting a 1.4% drop on the continent.

The past year has been a whirlwind of activity for Horizon Data Center Solutions The Plano, Texas-based data centre operator is currently in midst of implementing several major steps in a growth strategy that will secure a presence in all three major power-grids of the United States.

Chunghwa Telecom, the nation’s largest telecoms company, said it was considering raising capital spending this year to fund the construction of a new cloud computing data centre.

The company would evaluate the possibility of increasing this year’s capital spending by 10 percent from the NT$32.6 billion (US$1.02 billion) originally estimated. Chunghwa Telecom plans to build its second cloud computing data centre in Changhua County. That would bring the company’s investment in cloud computing data centres to NT$59 billion.

Source: Taipei Times

Sudlows Limited, a data centre design and build specialist, has won a £600,000 contract with The Co-operative Financial Services, to perform a data centre power upgrade at their North Manchester site. Sudlows, who recently completed an earlier phase on this multi-million pound project, will upgrade the 900 sq m rack space to attain a 2MVA resilient power capacity and deliver a much higher cooling capacity for total data centre protection.

Data centre developer T5 Partners plans to build a roughly US$75 million facility in metro Atlanta. The 100,000 sq ft centre would be among the five largest in the region, and include several mini data centres.

T5, which is developing two data centre parks in Charlotte, is considering a dozen sites for its metro Atlanta data centre, partner Jason Chartrand said.

Source: Atlanta Business Chronicle

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Digital Realty Trust, a publicly traded REIT and the world's largest wholesale data centre provider, and Behringer Harvard, a Dallas-based real estate firm, have announced their joint venture partnership to develop a move-in-ready Turn-Key Data centre facility for multiple tenants at Santa Clara Tech Center.

Rio Networks has brought its business telephone and data services to Salem. The Roseburg-based company’s array of services will include ether net over copper - a high speed means to transmit voice and data. Rio Networks has recently completed installation of its “Salem core” and its service is now available here, said Mark Bilton-Smith, the company’s president.

Rio Networks is also building a data centre colocation facility in Roseburg. It will provide a secure storage and redundant services platform for its customers, as well as other data communications companies.

Microsoft has announced it plans to open its most advanced data centre in Mecklenburg County, Virginia. The company will invest up to US$499 million, making it the largest investment project in Southern Virginia's history. Located in Boydton Industrial Park, the "Gen 4" Microsoft data centre build will create 50 jobs.

Equinix, a provider of global data centre services, has announced plans to build its second International Business Exchange data centre, HK2, in Hong Kong.

The market for 10 Gbit/second Ethernet switches geared for rack-mounted servers grew a whopping 300 % in the last quarter, an indicator a major upgrade cycle is underway in business networks, said an analyst.

Top-of-rack Ethernet switches will generate more than US$500 million in revenues this year, according to a new report from market watcher Dell'Oro Group. The switches literally sit on top of a cabinet of rack-mounted servers, handling traffic to and from larger aggregation switches in a data centre.

Source: EE Times

The Department of Defence’s peak technology strategy arm has started running the ruler over its technology suppliers as it considers establishing a new procurement panel for applications and systems integration services.