The South Korean goverment has consolidated the data centres of government agencies and provided an integrated management system for those IT resources, resulting in nearly US$60 million in cost savings. News of the consolidation efforts come as the US government continues its own consolidation plans, with 472 data centers expected to be closed by 2012, and 962 data centres by 2015.

China is in the midst of an unprecedented data centre construction boom that's providing business opportunities for U.S. companies and could see China emerge with one of the most advanced computing infrastructures in the world. The country is building dozens, maybe hundreds of large data centres to support the needs of its fast-growing online population, estimated now at close to 500 million. The data centres will help to meet escalating demand from telecom providers, and for services such as e-commerce, online banking and e-government.

A bank consortium has provided around €230 million of debt to the German data centre specialist E-shelter for the construction of a new centre in Germany. The members of the financing club are Italian lender Unicredit and German banks Bayerische Landesbank, and pbb Deutsche Pfandbriefbank  Unicredit acted as
mandated lead arranger and facility agent. 

As part of HP's global transformation to get the failing business on track, the computer giant has announced that it will let more than 180 workers in Australia go as part of a US$1 billion transformation project.  The move by the company was not surprising, but local staff had not been sure of their jobs until today. According to HP, 70% of the job cuts will happen in Melbourne, with the remainder in Sydney, and the roles varying from project managers to analysts and subject matter experts.

Virogen, a holding company specializing in data security and encryption technology, has announced that the company's wholly-owned subsidiary Tiger Team Technologies "T3," is engaged in substantive discussions to acquire a company operating four data centers in the southeast region of the United States.  T3's acquisition target presently has a client base upwards of 10,000 to which the company would market its enterprise data tracking and protection solutions upon finalization of the acquisition.

Spanish savings bank "la Caixa" and IBM have announced the establishment of a ten-year strategic services relationship. As part of the agreement, IBM and Serveis Informatics la Caixa, will manage the infrastructure technology budget of "la Caixa" of more than 2 billion euro over ten years. 

zColo, a Zayo Group company, has announced it has acquired MarquisNet's data-centre business in Las Vegas, Nevada. The 28,000 sq ft data centre, located at 7185 Pollock Drive, will be the twelfth zColo Colocation facility.

The acquisition represents Zayo Group's 18th acquisition since its inception. The acquisition is part of Zayo's strategy to grow its Bandwidth Infrastructure business through investments in organic growth as well as acquisitions.

Silicon Valley Bank, which caters to the venture capital community, announced today that it is expanding in Arizona and expects to add up to 220 jobs over the next three years. The Santa Clara-based financial services company is opening a new information technology and operations centre soon in Tempe and plan to hire 40 to 50 people over the next year.

The location won't be announced until a lease is signed. The company has had a small operation since 1997, and now has three employees. They will consolidate the offices this summer.

The Online Backup Company closed a NKr 50 million deal (€6.47 m) with Northzone and its partners to help the company expand to Sweden, Germany, and the rest of Europe. The company provides online backup and disaster recovery solutions, and has seen steady traction in its home in Norway with 4000 customers, 35 employees and a turnover close to NKr 50 million.

Digital Realty Trust, a leading global provider of data centre solutions, has completed the acquisition of 360 Spear Street, a 155,000 sq ft data centre facility located adjacent to its 365 Main Street facility (pictured) in SanFrancisco, California. The purchase price for the 100% leased, multi-tenant facility was US$85 million.

Carter Validus Mission Critical REIT has announced that it acquired a US$94.75 million, multi-tenant, wholesale data centre located in Atlanta, Georgia. The acquisition was completed through a joint venture between CV REIT and three institutional investors. As general partner and manager of the joint venture, CV REIT will control and run the operations of the property. The property, Peachtree Data Center, is a wholesale multi-tenant data centre facility for carriers and colocation providers.

Days after a fire in Airtel’s Malad data centre disrupted services, MTNL, the state-owned telecom player, has opened its second data centre for Mumbai at Belapur and outlined plans to set up two more centres in Delhi and Chennai.

European data centre operator LCL Belgium has announced it has completed renovations at a data centre in Erembodegem, Aalst, Belgium. Acquired last month, the DataCloud data centre spans 3,937 sq ft  with room to grow an additional 4,265 sq ft.

The newly renovated facility is similar to LCL's other two Belgium data centres the company owns in Antwerp and Diegem, which it expanded in March of 2009.

Source: The WHIR

Major data centre operators have announced plans to invest more than one billion baht to expand facilities and capitalise on demand over the next two years. Kosit Suksingha, the managing director of TCC Technology under the TCC Group, said his company aims to spend 200 million baht to increase its Bang Na data centre's capacity by 30%, build its first data centre in the Amata Nakorn Industrial Estate and expand into Cambodia.

ASX-listed NEXTDC has received formal development approval from the Western Australian Government’s Development Assessment Panels for an energy efficient data centre facility in Malaga, Perth, to service clients in mining and resources, corporate and government as well as cloud providers. The Panel has given approval for NEXTDC to construct the data centre, the latest in the company’s portfolio which includesd sites in Brisbane, Canberra, Sydneyand Melboune.

Ascent Data has announced that the company has been selected by StepOne Systems to implement a cloud-based hosting solution for StepOne RETAIL, its third-generation of in-store mobile software. 

Rackspace US, a subsidiary of Rackspace Hosting, has entered into an agreement to lease data centre space near Dallas.

Sea Fibre Networks, owner and operator of Europe's most advanced subsea telecoms network, CeltixConnect, have announced a major fibre contract with Colt, Europe's leading information delivery platform. Colt's customers will be enabled with the lowest latency solution connecting Ireland to the UK with onward access to Colt's industry leading pan-European network.

M&A activity in the data centre sector (businesses and property) generated more than US$12.3 billion in deal values globally in 2011.  The most active market is the USA followed by the UK and Australia.  In a review of finance and investment in the data centre sector, consulting firm BroadGroup assessed all publicly available data across M&A and fund raising activity. 

Knology has announced that it has acquired E Solutions Corporation for US$13.8 million in cash. E Solutions is a premiere provider of colocation and data centre services, operating two state-of-the-art SAS 70 Type II certified data centres in Tampa, Florida.

Sify Technologies has said it plans to invest INR4 billion to INR5 billion in India over the next two to three years to expand its network capacity and set up data centres. 

The Nasdaq-listed Internet-service provider that mainly offers network services for companies aims to build three new data centres in India, Chairman and Managing Director Raju Vegesna said. 

Source: Total Telecom 

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Green House Data, one of the nation’s first green data centres offering cloud hosting and colocation services, has partnered with mechanical and electrical engineering firm Deerns America for both their expertise in green data centre design and for their patented Green Cooling for Data Centers (GC-DC) air onditioning technology. This energy efficient data centre design will allow Green House Data’s new facility to operate at levels 75% more efficient than the typical data centre, according to the Uptime Institute survey in May 2011.

Perseus Telecom, a global provider of connectivity, has announced that the firm has acquired a new data hub at 60 Hudson Street in New York City, marking a significant expansion of the firm's network for trading firms and enterprise networks. The data centre provides global point-to-point and point-to-multipoint connectivity between financial exchanges, data centres and corporate office locations, thus making it one of the most important carrier buildings in the world.

The Bunker, provider of managed hosting, cloud computing, colocation, and outsourced IT from within Europe’s most secure data centres, has  announced that it has successfully opened a significant new high specification data hall in Kent.

Telecoms company Eaton Towers has secured a US$30-million debt facility to boost its business of selling telecom tower colocation and shared-infrastructure facilities to mobile operators. The debt facility, a first for Eaton, would fund operational maintenance of existing towers that the company manages for Vodafone Ghana, as well as the construction of new towers, said CFO Peter Lewis.

Infosys has reported revenues of US$1.8 billion for the third quarter ended December 31, 2011, an increase of 3.4%, compared to US$1.58 billion for the same period of 2010. The company posted gross profit of US$776 million for the third quarter of 2011, compared to US$679 million for the same period of 2010. Total operating expenses were US$216 million for the third quarter of 2011, compared to US$200 million for the same period of 2010.

Rio Tinto and CGI Group, a leading provider of information technology and business process services, have announced the renewal and expansion of their outsourcing contract. The three-year contract extension is valued at approximately US$60 million.

Germany's SAP, the world's biggest maker of business software, reported a better than expected rise in fourth-quarter sales and profits. Operating profits were up 10% at 1.78 billion euros (US$2.28 billion) in the quarter, ahead of the consensus forecast of 1.65 billion euros expected by analysts, according to Thomson Reuters StarMine.

Capgemini, the global IT services and business consulting firm, announced a major expansion of its operations in Poland with the opening of a new IT service centre in Opole and plans to add several hundred jobs at its other sites in the country in the course of 2012.

Gov. Matt Mead’s plan to double the amount of money to recruit data centres and other high-tech companies to the state prompted a slew of questions from legislators late last week. In his budget proposal to the 2012 Legislature, Mead seeks to add US $15 million to the US$15 million already in the governor’s budget, which was designed to attract large data centres to the state, such as Verizon. 

The federal government has moved forward with a project that will add 200 jobs nearby in Urbana when the project is complete in 2015. The U.S. General Services Administration awarded a US$191.5 million contract to design and build the Social Security Administration's new national data facility.

Hensel Phelps Construction Co., based in Chantilly, Virgina, won the contract. The project involves a 300,000 sq ft facility, said Laurie Boyer, the executive director of the Frederick County Office of Economic Development.

IVG Private Funds is launching a new closed-end real estate fund: EuroSelect 21 Munich. The new fund will invest in Allianz’s largest German site in Unterföhring (Munich district), consisting of a central administrative building and an operations building. The latter is also home to the group’s largest data centre worldwide. The two buildings, which have total floor space of around 131,000 m², are let to Allianz until at least 31 December 2024 under the terms of an indexed rental agreement. The forecast annual payments are 5.5%.

Level 3 has announced it has been retained by Avianca to enhance the airline's voice and data communications capabilities as it experiences rapid growth. Avianca now has more than 2,300 employees, 400 of whom are based in Sao Paulo. The airline flies to 22 destinations in Brazil, and serves more than 3 million passengers worldwide each year.

3M Co. it has formed a partnership with a Texas-based fibre management company in a move expected to expand 3M's product offerings for data centres.

Carter Validus Mission Critical REIT, Inc. has agreed to acquire 2775 Northwoods, LLC's interest in a 33,000 sq ft net leased data centre in Norcross, Georgia. The Northwoods Data Center is fully leased to a single tenant. The purchase price of the Northwoods Data Center would be US$5.3 million plus closing costs.

The profits of mid-tier IT company MindTree nearly doubled owing to a significant improvement in utilisation and depreciation of the rupee, during the quarter ended December 31, 2011. MindTree which has announced its third quarter results also said the company expects muted growth during the next quarter as “the global economic situation continues to be challenging.”

Its net profit rose to Rs 60.6 crore, a 98.7% increase over the same quarter last year. Revenue grew by 35.1% to Rs 519.7 crore from the same quarter last year. 

IO, the leading provider of next-generation modular data centre technology and services, has announced a record year for IO. Anywhere customer deployments. The rapid growth of mobile and cloud computing combined with the unique ability to deliver an operational data centre in as little as 90 days positions IO for significant growth in 2012.

St. Louis-based XIOLINK has announced the completion of phase two of its state-of-the-art data centre. As a leading provider of managed infrastructure, colocation and private cloud computing solutions, XIOLINK invested an additional US$2.3 million in the infrastructure, power and cooling of its 1111 Olive data centre, increasing the capacity by 60%.

Two NHS organisations in North London have signed contracts with 2e2 for its managed ICT services. In a series of contracts worth £4 million, Haringey Community Services and NHS North Central London Cluster will join Camden Primary Care Trust, Islington PCT and Camden and Islington NHS Foundation Trust on an existing managed IT services deal in the area.

Wipro, India's No3 software services exporter, flagged the uncertain global economic environment as a concern after roughly meeting expectations with a 10% rise in quarterly profit, mainly helped by a weaker rupee.  Wipro said it expects US$1.52 billion to US$1.55 billion revenue from its IT services unit, which contributes three-quarters of its total sales, in the March quarter, a sequential rise of nearly 1% to 3%.

Intel just completed a year in which it hit record financial results, including exceeding US$50 billion in revenues for the first time, despite lingering softness in the core PC market. However, it will be the giant chip maker’s performance in 2012 that will determine how it goes forward over the next few years.

The UK Olympic Park Legacy Company has announced a shortlist of three organisations that are in the running to become the long-term tenant of the Press and Broadcast Centres, follwoing the Olympic Games in London.  UK Fashion Hub, Oxylane Group and iCITY all share the Legacy Company’s vision to create a thriving commercial district on the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park that will generate several thousand job and training opportunities in the process.

Xilinx, a programmable logic solutions player, is planning to expand its research and development centre in India. "We are expected to shift to the new and bigger facility by the end of this year," said Vamsi Bopanna, site director and CTO India, Xilinx India Technology Services.

Located at Hyderabad, the new 130,000 sq ft R&D facility will house labs and new data centres, the company informed. "We are almost doubling our R&D capacity by moving from the current 57,000 sq ft to the 130,000 sq ft facility."

Source: EETImes India

A framework contract to provide shared IT services to London boroughs could be worth up to £1.2 billion, according to a tender document just published. The framework forms part of Programme Athena, an initiative to unify IT and procurement systems across all London boroughs. Due for completion in 2016, the programme is designed to reduce operating costs, improve access to data and standardise business processes across the boroughs.

InTechnology, the Harrogate based Cloud Services provider, has opened a new data centre in Reading, Berkshire. InTechnology sales director Natalie Duffield told media sources that "The Reading data centre has been built to Tier 3 standards and we have used only next generation equipment supplied by leading vendors”.

Like InTechnology's London and Harrogate (pictured) data centres, its newest secure hosting facility will be embedded in the organisation's highly resilient, nationwide MPLS network.

Communications service provider Internet Solutions is investigating the option of moving into Asia, with the help of its parent company NTT. In an effort to expand beyond South Africa, But Asia isn’t the only location the company would like to expand into, as the formation of IS International will allow them to strengthen their presence in Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya and Mozambique – while also looking at Angola, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Malawi. 

National Bank of Canada and CGI Group have signed a five-year information services contract valued at US$350 million. For 11 years, CGI has provided National Bank with application development and support services. Under the terms of the new contract, National Bank will continue to benefit from the expertise of CGI and its professionals in maintaining and developing its banking information systems.

Nationwide technology and data security group Onyx has unveiled plans to almost double the size of its South Yorkshire data centre and create new jobs less than a year after moving into the centre at Manvers in Rotherham. The expansion is the first to be unveiled by Onyx, following ISIS Equity Partners’ £42 million investment in the company in October.

The city of Cleveland has its first potential buyer for land that state officials rejected last year for a psychiatric hospital project. Superior Technology Partners, based in Columbus, hopes to buy 2.25 acres of the nearly 14-acre site and build a data centre there.

EMC, the world’s biggest maker of storage computers, reported a 32% gain in fourth- quarter earnings, helped by demand for its products and software from majority-owned VMware. Net income rose to US$832million, from US$628.6 million, a year earlier, the Hopkinton, Massachusetts-based company said.

Banco Supervielle has implemented a new to help it take a next step: virtualization. This project is part of the bank's strategy to consolidate its business in a single corporate building that houses the data centre and a unified network.

The data centre facilitates operations and helps enable mission-critical information to be administered within the bank, maximizing resources and providing agility to the business while its customers can access their accounts and financial services anytime and anywhere

Source: 4 Traders

Infinity has announced that is has concluded an agreement with Cable & Wireless Worldwide to provide a new 4.3MW data centre facility. This multi-million investment represents a 25% expansion in CWW’s data hosting capacity. Based at a secure site in the South East of England, the new Tier III certified facility will ensure that CWW can support the increasing demands from clients for secure, robust and reliable hosting and shared services solutions.

According to a recent report by Dell'Oro Group, , the L2-3 Ethernet Switch market is forecast to approach US$28 billion in 2016, with future growth to be driven primarily by sales of Ethernet switches optimized for larger data centre deployments. By 2016, 10 Gigabit Ethernet in the Ethernet Switch market is expected to comprise the majority of revenue.  Also expected by 2016 is robust growth in 40 Gigabit Ethernet and 100 Gigabit Ethernet with the combined technologies expected to exceed US$3 billion.

Tata Communications has announced fresh investment of US$450 million or about Rs 2,250 crore in new product areas.  Following the announcement of its third

QLogic, a leading supplier of high performance network infrastructure solutions, today announced its third quarter financial results for the period ended January 1, 2012.  

Oregon tax authorities are backing away from a ruling that created a rift between the state and Facebook. The Department of Revenue has said it will change its rules so data centres like Facebook's are assessed by local tax authorities, not by the state.

Zen Internet, one of the UK's leading independent Internet Service Providers, has announced it is investing £4 million in a new purpose built data centre at its North West headquarters in Rochdale. The contract for the design and build of the new data centre has been awarded to the UK's leading communications infrastructure specialist, Sudlows.

Potawatomi Business Development Corp.  plans to open a US$36 million data centre in Milwaukee in 2013 after finding a void in the region for companies looking to lease space for information storage.

The 45,000-sq ft data centre would be built in the Potawatomi community’s Concordia Trust property on Milwaukee’s near west side. The Potawatomi will lease its floor space to other businesses to set up data-storage consoles.

Source: Milwaukee Business Journal

Sify Technologies, a leader in Managed Enterprise, Network and ICT Services in India with growing global delivery capabilities, has announced its consolidated results under International Financial Reporting Standards for the third quarter of fiscal year 2011-12.

Allstate Insurance Co. on Executive Parkway has made a 13-year commitment to stay in the city and invest US$20 million in its company, Gov. John Kasich has announced. 

“The decision means they’ll retain 1,200 jobs here in Hudson and invest approximately US$20 million in new data equipment for their data centre where they electronically process all the business transaction on a daily basis,” said Hudson Economic Director Chuck Wiedie.

 Source: Hudson Hub Times

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Swiss engineering group ABB has agreed to buy US electrical components maker Thomas Betts for US$3.9 billion to ramp up its presence in the world’s largest market for low-voltage products. Under the terms of yesterday’s deal, ABB will pay US$72 per share in cash – a 24% premium over the stock’s closing price on Friday – for the company, which supplies the construction, communications and power industries with connectors for cables, steel masts and heating and ventilation products.