Racktivity, an innovator in next-generation energy and uptime management solutions for data centres, has announced the closing of an US$8 million Series B round of financing led by Partech International, with the participation of existing investor Big Bang Ventures. The funds will be used to accelerate Racktivity’s product, technology and market development initiatives.

Racktivity’s integrated solutions are intended to substantially improve uptime and reduce energy consumption, costs and carbon emissions of data centres.

Source: Source Wire

When one thinks of green, the first thought that comes to mind probably is not a chilly warehouse packed sky-high with servers. Yet in the energy-efficiency world, that’s exactly what where an increasingly amount of focus is going to — data centres.

With data centres increasingly positioned as a new asset class, the 4th Finance and Investment Forum for data centres taking place in London on 9th December is extremely timely.

With an international audience comprising of the strategic leadership of data centre operators, financiers, investors, private equity firms, law firms and other companies engaged in the sector, from more than 17 countries, the annual meeting will discuss finance, funding, IPO strategies, business models, market prospects and forecasts for 2011.

Source: Source Wire

3000 Skyline Dallas, a 750,000 sq ft data centre development, is complete. Located in the City of Mesquite, Texas, nine miles from the Dallas CBD, the facility boasts its own on-site substation will feature 100 million watts of power provided by Oncor Electric Delivery Company. The facility is a powered shell development of Dallas-based CAPSTAR Commercial Real Estate Services and The Cambay Group, based in Walnut Creek, CA.

Google has signed a contract to acquire 111 8th Avenue in Manhattan, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. At 2.9 million sq ft, the coveted piece of real estate is valued at almost US$1.9 billion, the report says, citing sources familiar with the matter. The report says one-third of the space in the building is occupied by telecommunication companies with Google currently occupying about 500,000 sq ft of the building.

State tax incentives to get more data centres plugged in to Grant County's cheap power seem to be working. Yahoo, the Internet mega-company, has begun construction on a fast-track expansion of its existing 180,000 sq ft facility, a Port of Quincy spokesman confirmed.

Hewlett-Packard Australia is investing more than A$100 million into the building of a new site in NSW. The IT giant has applied to develop a data centre complex on a whopping 13.4ha (134,000 sq m) of land in Eastern Creek, NSW, about an hour's drive from the Sydney CBD. HP could build a second data centre building at the same location in future.

The facility will be located near the Coles distribution centre in the M7 business hub, which falls under Blacktown City Council. The estimated capital investment of the project, including design and construction, was $119 million.

ViaWest, a provider of adaptable colocation and managed services, has announced the company's acquisition of SingleEdge, a colocation and managed service provider based in Salt Lake City. With the acquisition, ViaWest will increase its footprint to seven data centres encompassing approximately 120,000 sq ft of usable raised floor in the greater Salt Lake City area.

SingleEdge's assets include 14 employees and a 14,700 sq ft data centre facility.

Source: PR Newswire

Fitch Ratings has assigned UK-based Global Switch Holdings Ltd (Global Switch) a Long-term Issuer Default Rating (IDR) of 'BBB' and a senior unsecured rating of 'BBB'.

The company's Short-term IDR has been assigned at 'F3'. The Outlook on the Long-term IDR is Stable. Global Switch is one of the world's largest owners and operators of wholesale data centres.

Source: Global Switch
 

Savvis has announced that Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe, which holds 27.2% of SVVS outstanding shares through its WCAS VIII investment fund, said in a regulatory filing that it has distributed 5 million Savvis shares to investors in the fund.

This transaction will result in a decrease in WCAS's SVVS holdings to 10.3 million shares or 18.3% of outstanding shares. According to WCAS, its Savvis shares are one of the last major holdings in WCAS VIII, which was formed over 10 years ago.

Salesforce.com said it has agreed to buy privately held cloud-platform company Heroku for up to US$249 million to expand its presence in cloud computing related to social and mobile applications.

San Francisco-based Heroku is a cloud-software platform company which charges developers to host applications written in the Ruby programming language on its servers

Source: Reuters

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SAIC, a scientific, engineering, and technology applications company, today announced financial results for the third quarter of fiscal year 2011, which ended October 31, 2010.

Revenues for the quarter were US$2.87 billion, up 4% from US$2.77 billion in the third quarter of fiscal year 2010.

Source: PR Newswire

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-City, a subsidiary of listed I-Bhd, plans to build a second data centre with two towers worth RM300 million. The company would form a strategic alliance with HDC Data Centre to develop the centre and the first tower was expected to be completed in three years, i-City Chief Executive Officer Eu Hong Chew said Thursday.

The first 50,000 square feet data centre was completed a year ago and HDC occupies half the space. It was envisaged that i-City would focus on building aspect of the development while HDC would be responsible for the equipment and facilities, Eu said.

Leading local data services provider IP-Converge Data Center Inc. debuted on the Philippine Stock Exchange Thursday after raising P190.9 million in fresh funds to put up new data centres in Bonifacio Global City and Cebu.

Australia’s data centre explosion continues at a pace not seen since the internet bubble, with new facilities coming on line each week. Australia is currently readying about 25 MW of data centre capacity, ranging from office block conversions to mega facilities. But is a data centre a commodity purchase, or something strategic?

National Australia Bank is likely to sell its main data centre in Melbourne to International Business Machines as part of a five-year contract to be signed between the two companies, the Australian Financial Review reported, without saying where it got the information.

As part of the contract, worth several hundred million dollars, IBM will take over management of the bank’s computing infrastructure, according to the report. The deal will also renew IBM’s A$100 million contract to provide desktop services to NAB, signed in 2007, the newspaper said.

Source: Bloomberg

LeaseWeb, one of Europe’s largest quality hosting providers, has announced the acquisition of Frankfurt-based netdirekt. The Dutch hosting provider’s goal is to offer its solutions and services directly across the German-speaking markets and to become the leading Web Hoster in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

North Carolina is proposing to privatize its IT services as part of a broad cost-cutting move. Gov. Bev Perdue said last week she wants to hire a vendor to consolidate and centralize the state’s IT services.

Global Crossing has announced third quarter results for its subsidiary, Global Crossing (UK) Telecommunications Limited (GCUK).

For the third quarter of 2010, GCUK generated revenue of £75 million and Operating Income before Depreciation and Amortization (OIBDA) of £16 million. The company also reported net cash provided by operations of £10 million.

Source: Benzinga

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The Japanese unit of US software giant Microsoft, will consider setting up a data centre in Japan for cloud computing services, the president and chief executive officer of Microsoft Co. said. The Tokyo-based subsidiary is trying to provide cloud computing services in Japan through a tie-up with Fujitsu Ltd. to use the latter's data centre, but will study setting up its own ''if necessary,'' Yasuyuki Higuchi said in a recent interview with Kyodo News. It may expand an existing data centre in the Tokyo area for the Hotmail web-based e-mail service, he added.

AboveNet, a provider of high bandwidth connectivity solutions, has announced a strategic sales campaign to expand its network reach to enterprises and carriers in the top U.S. metro markets. The campaign will initially focus on customers in the more than 400 data centres already connected to AboveNet's high performance, low latency network.

Atos Origin and Siemens unveiled their intention to form a global strategic partnership with regards to IT services. Siemens will contribute its Siemens IT Solutions and Services for € 850 million to Atos Origin, while acquiring for at least five years, a 15% stake in Atos Origin.

According to the Estates Gazette, Lloyds Banking Group, advised by CB Richard Ellis, has chosen Scotland as a possible site for a new data centre. The Bank is reported to have entered into a deal with Internet Villages International to acquire a site at Ecclefechan in Dumfries and Galloway for a £200 million data centre. The acquisition is conditional on planning consent being granted. Plans for the scheme are expected to be lodged before Christmas.

For about a decade, Rackspace Hosting has operated two of its nine data centres here. But about 30 employees could have different responsibilities next year if the San Antonio-based company decides not to renew the leases for the local data centres in 2012.

Capgemini, one of the foremost providers of consulting, technology and outsourcing services, has announced the acquisition of the German IT-Services company CS Consulting GmbH from LRPC, a fund managed by Süd Beteiligungen (a subsidiary of Landesbank Baden-Württemberg), founder Berndt Blumenthal and Dr. Kurt Rommel.

A rapidly expanding New York telecommunications company has opened a new data centre in downtown Milwaukee. Paetec Holding said it offers data storage, back-up and other services to businesses in Milwaukee and the Midwest. Milwaukee’s proximity to some major Midwestern metro areas and the area's skilled technology workforce played a role in the decision to locate the data centre here, said Forrest Knueppel, Paetec's regional director for Wisconsin. Paetec previously had a small data operation in Milwaukee.

The Board of Directors of Sinobiomed has announced the acquisition of all data centre assets from Keychain, Ltd, a Hong Kong limited company, specializing in international telecommunications consulting, management and hosting services on behalf of clients with strategic connectivity and network infrastructure requirements in major world cities.

Twitter is considering expanding into Sacramento with a new server centre, according to reports. The micro-blogging website currently stores much of its data on servers through New York-based NTT America, which has cited Twitter's growth as a driver of its own expansion.

Unnamed sources have said that Twitter is scouting out locations in Sacramento to house a data centre of its own to help handle its rapid growth -- the social media site has been adding up to 300,000 users a day this year, the report said.

Source: Los Angeles Times

Technology firm ANS Group today posted a 38% rise in half-year profits and said its order book is at a record level. ANS Group, based at Manchester Science Parks, announced pre-tax profits of £680,000 for the six months to September 30, with revenues up 63% from £5.5 million to £8.98 million.

The company, which is listed on the PLUS market for smaller firms and provides and installs data centres, networks, servers and email systems for public sector bodies and private companies, announced an increase in its interim dividend from 1.25p to 1.5p.

Telephone and Data Systems has purchased TEAM Technologies, a privately owned data centre provider, for US$47 million. TEAM has data centres in Fitchburg, and in Des Moines and Cedar Falls, Iowa, and will be managed by TDS. TEAM, currently based in Cedar Falls, has a total of 20 employees, eight of them in Fitchburg. All will keep their jobs, TDS spokeswoman DeAnne Boegli said.

Rackspace planted its cloud computing flag deeper into the ground on Thursday with the acquisition of Cloudkick, a deal that adds cloud management and monitoring to Rackspace's growing cadre of cloud computing plays.

Utility company Centrica has chosen HP and Fujitsu to deliver desktop and data centre services while the previous supplier of these services, T-Systems, focuses on SAP services in the cloud and smart grid technology.

T-Systems previously had the desktop and data centre contracts. As a result of the change, about 120 employees will transfer form the company to Fujitsu, HP and Centrica. A source said HP is taking the data centre work while Fujitsu is to be awarded the desktop contract. The source said Centrica is insourcing more of the management of these two contracts.

Hewlett-Packard is doubling down on Atlanta with plans to add more than 200 local jobs next year. The expansion, which involves expanding an existing data centre in Alpharetta, could eventually generate up to 1,000 jobs, sources said.

Palo Alto, Calif.-based HP has a roughly 60-acre campus on Windward Parkway, where it employs more than 850 in three office buildings. The company, which declined comment, also operates a data centre in Suwanee.

Source: Atlanta Business Chronicle

Telefonica will deploy a data centre in the Spanish city of Alcala de Henares. Telefonica plans to maintain only two data centres for its operations in Europe, local media report.

Telefonica aims to unify its nearly 100 data centres worldwide into six large facilities. Four will be located in Latin America and two in Europe. Telefonica plans to invest around €300 million in the deployment of its new data centre in Alcala. The facility will occupy a pace of nearly 80,000 sq m. The deployment will comprise two phases, the first of which is scheduled for completion in 2011.

By Jane Harbour, Datacentre News Search

Sources of funding for data centre and network projects are key topics for next month's annual Finance and Investment Forum, the fourth year for the event, which takes place in London on 9th December.

The largest and most reliable data centre infrastructure in Baltics is available in DEAC data centres, located in Latvia. For global IT projects realization in Europe DEAC has to offer: more than 600 racks with megawatts of energy, cloud computing solutions, highly developed IT infrastructure and carrier-neutral fast secure telecommunications.

HP Enterprise Services UK Limited has announced BP International Limited has signed a five-year outsourcing services agreement valued in excess of US$400 million.

Blogging services company Tumblr Inc. has raised US$30 million in a new round of funding. The company, which gained initial financing last spring, now has raised US$40 million in venture capital underwriting.

The company said it plans to dramatically enlarge its engineering team and open another data centre to increase capacity. The company currently hosts 11 million blogs, more than double the total when it raised US$10 million in initial funding last April.

Source: BtoB

Red Hat, the world's leading provider of open source solutions, today announced financial results for its fiscal year 2011 third quarter ended November 30, 2010. Total revenue for the quarter was US$235.6 million, an increase of 21% from the year ago quarter. Subscription revenue for the quarter was US$198.8 million, up 21% year-over-year.

"Strong market demand and sales execution, combined with a compelling value proposition, led to organic billings growth of over 20%, or $262 million." stated Jim Whitehurst, President and Chief Executive Officer of Red Hat. "

Teradata, the world's largest company solely focused on data warehousing and business analytics, has announced the signing of a definitive agreement to acquire Aprimo, a global leader in cloud-based integrated marketing software for approximately US$525 million.

Together, the two visionary leaders will bring powerful business analytics with integrated marketing solutions to enable corporations to improve and optimize marketing performance with data-driven insights. In addition, Teradata will draw upon Aprimo's deep expertise in Cloud and Software as a Service functionality.