21Vianet Group, the largest carrier-neutral Internet data centre services provider in China, have announced its unaudited financial results for the fourth quarter of 2011.

Full Year 2011 financial highlights include: Net revenues increased by 94.4% to RMB1.0 billion (US$162.2 million) from RMB525.2 million in 2010; Adjusted EBITDA increased by 149.9% to RMB209.0 million (US$33.2 million) from RMB83.7 million in 2010 and Adjusted net profit increased by 185.9% to RMB170.0 million (US$27.0 million) from RMB59.5 million in 2010.

Metro Nashville will offer HCA a seven-year tax break for expanding in Nashville. HCA announced last week a $200 million expansion project that includes a new data centre in Antioch. The investment is to create more than 150 jobs over the next five years.

Interxion, a leading European provider of carrier-neutral colocation data centre services, has announced its results for the three months and year ended 31 December 2011.

Interxion Chief Executive Officer, David Ruberg, stated, “In Interxion’s first year as a public company, we continued our track record of strong performance by consistently executing on our business strategy, achieving continued organic growth across all key metrics while positioning the company for continued growth in 2012 and beyond.

Indian conglomerate Tata Communications Ltd has confirmed speculation that it is considering a possible purchase of Cable & Wireless Worldwide (C&WW) plc. The acquisition, if it were to go ahead, would give Tata a foothold in the UK communications sector, expanding its international fibre optic cable network and giving it a lot of cable within the UK.

Wired Real Estate Group, the nation's leading data centre advisor, has completed the placement of a national colocation company in an 82,000 sq ft property in Denver, Colorado. The site has 14 MW of existing utility service, and when completed, the site is expected to garner over US$50 million in investment as a high density, Tier III colocation facility.

A new company has taken over plans for a £12 million data centre in Dumfriesshire. Scotia Global is proposing to develop a farmland site near Ecclefechan. Internet Villages International Ltd had previously planned to set up a data centre at Johnstonebank Farm. But it backed away after Lloyds Banking Group withdrew funding support.

Network Solutions Provider has announced the acquisitions of two companies: Telecommunications Experts Inc., Phoenix, AZ and Tier 1 Data Centers, San Jose, CA. Telecommunications Experts Inc. is a VOIP technology provider and installer while Tier 1 Data Centers builds data centres across the U.S. These acquisitions will expand NSP's capabilities and reach into emerging markets such as Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Ohio and Seattle.

Telus has finally released the decision on where it will build a new data centre, and it isn’t Prince George. Kamloops will be home to the “one of the world’s greenest data centres”. This will be a C$100 million dollar project.

Digital Realty Trust, a leading global data centre solution provider, has released the results of a study of Asia Pacific data centre trends based on a detailed survey of senior decision makers at large corporations in Singapore, Australia and Hong Kong who are responsible for shaping their companies' data centre strategies. The research was conducted for Digital Realty by the research firm Campos Research & Analysis.

CoreSpace, a dedicated server and colocation data service provider has annocued it has bought a Dallas data centre and in addition will be relocating its headquarters to Dallas from Las Vegas.

The data centre provider has bought a 30,000-sq ft building at 7505 John Carpenter Freeway, near the intersection of State Highway 183 and Mockingbird Lane in Dallas. The financial details of the transaction were undisclosed.

Source: Dallas Business Journal

Following the award of Tier III certification by the Uptime Institute to its first Moscow data centre, DataSpace, a developer and operator of business-critical colocation facilities for enterprises and managed IT service providers, has announced working with the HP team to develop a network of six Tier III facilities in or near Moscow, including two more on its expansive urban campus.

The UK's Department of Health and IT services giant CSC have reached a new agreement over the troubled electronic health records contract which means the latter's Lorenzo system still may be used, as long as NHS Trusts want it.  The DoH said the agreement involves a "hugely improved settlement for the NHS", which means that local Trusts greater choice over whether they want to use CSC's Lorenzo electronic health records software, in line with the government's decentralised NHS IT strategy.

The IT services arm of Indian steel-to-oil conglomerate Essar Group is in talks to raise US$500 million to US$00 million through a US initial public offering and the sale of a stake to private equity firms, sources familiar with the matter said.

Tulip Telecom, which owns the third largest data centre globally, plans to rope in an investor for its data centre and is willing to shed between 10% and 25% stake in the centre. The Tulip Telecom Managing Director, Col H.S. Bedi, said that it will depend on the kind of valuation it can get for shedding the stake in the centre which is called Tulip Data City.

Panama President Ricardo Martinelli has inaugurated information technology firm KIO Networks’ new data centre in the Panama Pacifico development. The facility will be KIO’s new regional headquarters, and the company’s first office in Central America.

Today sees the launch of Pulsant, a powerful and leading supplier of Cloud and Managed Hosting services to the UK mid-market. Formed by the combination and integration of Lumison, DediPower and Bluesquare Data, Pulsant is a £30 million turnover company which is poised for rapid growth fuelled by a £6 million 2012 investment plan that includes new staff, additional facilities and services as well as targeted sales initiatives.

CTERA Networks, the international storage solution vendor for value-added resellers and managed services providers, has honed in on the European storage market and locked-up a deal with Swisscom IT Services, which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Swisscom AG, one of the largest telecom providers in all of Europe.

IT services firm Interactive has scaled back plans to build out co-location data centre space in Melbourne, redirecting a planned A$50 million investment into managed services and office space. Managing director Christopher Ride said the change was sparked by the impending entry of a host of large co-lo players in Melbourne - including NextDC, Metronode and Digital Realty - and faster-than-expected adoption of IT managed services.

Steel ORCA expects to break ground early this spring on its long-awaited data centre project at the former U.S. Steel Fairless Works factory.

The company has completed environmental studies and is prepared to construct the 700,000-sq ft facility on 40 acres. It will cost about US$750 million at build-out, said Dave Crocker, CEO of Steel ORCA. “As soon as we can get our building permits, we’ll be in the ground,” Crocker said.

Source: Philadelphia Business Journal

Vocus Communications is set to sign an increased bank loan worth up to A$18 million to fund the expansion of its data centre and dark fibre network. According to its chief executive James Spenceley the company already had an existing and untapped A$7 million loan facility on its books. He said the company had received a range of offers to increase this to between A$15 million and A$18 million from a number of banks and would accept one of them “within days”.

The UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office has revealed details of an upcoming IT managed services framework deal that is valued at up to £350 million.  The six year contract is likely to attract attention considering the government’s recent claims that it is moving away from large IT deals that tie it to a select few service integrators for many years.

Daimler has signed a major infrastructure services deal with HP that will support key systems at the luxury car maker. The deal aims to cut costs and will support Daimler's data centres and help manage the firm's financial services, sales and dealer organisations in Germany. The company is consolidating and standardising its global IT system with the goal of reducing the number of existing systems.

IP Pathways, based out of Des Moines, have announced they have opened their Kansas City office and unveiled their long-term growth plans for the market.

Digital Realty Trust, a leading global data centre solutions provider, has released key findings from its annual study of the North American data centre market. The research was conducted by Campos Research & Analysis, which surveyed senior decision makers at large corporations in North America who are responsible for shaping their companies' data centre strategies.

Corporate telco, Macquarie Telecom has announced it will partner with two Australian IT firms to build its new A$60 million data centre. Server Racks Australia and Syndeticom Electrical & Communications were selected to aid in the construction of the Intellicentre 2 data centre in North Ryde, Sydney.

 SRA is set toprovide the server racks for the new data centre, which will help fulfil Macquarie's Cold-Aisle-Containment cooling strategy, while Syndeticom will work on the cabling infrastructure of the new facility.

Gatwick Airport has unveiled details of a framework agreement that covers a vast variety of IT operational services, set to be worth up to £73 million. An online tender outlines 11 different lots that suppliers will be able to bid for, each of which will last for a total of four years.

NGDATA has announced that the company will raise capital to accelerate its growth activities in the United States and continue investments in the development of its big data management platform. NGDATA enables organizations to obtain real-time business insights based on large amounts of data gathered from their audiences. These valuable insights are used to make quick and efficient decisions and improve business performance.

GE Capital’s Commercial Distribution Finance business has announced that it will provide US$40 million in inventory financing and working capital to Redapt, a data centre infrastructure solutions provider and hardware reseller based in Redmond, WA.

The “Cloud Valley,” which is envisioned to be a cluster of cloud computing operators interlocked to one another to do good things for mankind, was initiated yesterday, with industry players touting the potential of the new technology. “The Cloud Valley will play a key role in transforming Taiwan into a true international informational technology powerhouse,” said Lu Hsueh-chin, chairman of Chunghwa Telecom who doubles as the head of the Cloud Computing Association of Taiwan. The initiation ceremony was attended by various VIPs including Lu as well as Premier Sean Chen.

The American Express data centre in the Rock Creek Industrial Park, though not operational yet, is now on the Guilford County, North Carolina tax rolls with an assessed value of more than US$196 million. The "heated area” is a bit less than a half-million square feet. The property size is 107 acres.

A second property of 56 acres, with no building on it yet, is valued at US$1.9 million. A third property, on Rock Creek Dairy Road, is 30 acres and valued at US$456,300.

Source: News Record

Cheyenne is one of two finalists for a proposed US$112 million data centre, state business officials have said. State officials are looking at offering US$10 million in grants to help lure the data centre, which would be owned by an unnamed Fortune 100 company with an international presence, according to a Wyoming Business Council project description.

Following last year’s announcement from Dell that it planned to invest over US$1 billion to build new data centres and develop sets of products in areas such as virtualisation and cloud computing, Amit Midha, Dell's president for Asia Pacific and Japan has said that the company is planning to set up more than 20 data centres in response to demand form customers.

C4L has announced that it is helping Natural Enterprise, a not-for-profit organisation, provide and guarantee high-speed internet to rural areas on the Isle of Wight as part of the Yarmouth Broadband project. Beginning with the town of Yarmouth, C4L is providing Natural Enterprise with a 100Mbps wireless connection between the Yarmouth Exchange and C4L’s own connection to the UK network in Bournemouth..

The National Security Agency is putting the finishing touches to a huge data centre that will be used to store the personal phone calls, emails and Google searches of people on the agency's watch list. The facility will have 100,000 sq ft of IT space split across four 25,000 sq ft data halls.

Most data centres aren’t running very efficiently, based on new research from IBM. Out of 300 data centres surveyed in the IBM study, conducted by IDC, only 1 in 5 are operating efficiently. Furthermore, nearly 80% of the 300 CIOs and IT leaders were found to be behind in making the most of their IT investments.

TelecityGroup, a provider of premium carrier-neutral data centres, and Internet Exchange AMS-IX have announced that AMS-IX has chosen AMS5 in Amsterdam-Southeast, the new TelecityGroup data centre, as the site for a new core PoP. AMS-IX is adding a core PoP to its Metropolitan Area Network (MAN) as part of its expansion commitment.

Capgemini UK will provide information technology support services to Rolls-Royce under a three-year contract. The consulting and technology firm announced that the contract could extend for up to five years. The company’s infrastructure services and application services teams will support Rolls-Royce’s operations from the US, UK, India and Poland for a five year period.

Zayo Group and AboveNet, have announced that their boards of directors have approved a definitive agreement under which Zayo will acquire AboveNet for approximately US$2.2 billion. Under the terms of the agreement, each share of AboveNet common stock issued and outstanding immediately prior to the transaction will be entitled to receive US$84.00 per share in cash, representing a 13% premium over AboveNet’s closing price on March 16, 2012 and a 21% premium over the average closing stock price for the past 60 days.

Symantec has doubled the capacity of its Symantec cloud services in Australia by signing a three-year, multi-million dollar deal to colocate servers and associated equipment in a Fujitsu data centre in Sydney, Australia.  This investment will enable Symantec to meet growing business demand for secure, reliable and high-performance cloud services including email, endpoint, web and instant messaging security as well as backup and archiving solutions.

Maverick fuel-cell maker Bloom Energy has turned its focus to data centres, after the appointment of Peter Gross, who joined the company last week as the vice president of Mission Critical Systems. Previously Gross was a co-founder and CEO of EYP Mission Critical Facilities, an engineering firm dedicated to the design and operation of data centres.

Teraco Data Environments, South Africa’s first provider of vendor neutral data centres, has announced that NAPAfrica, the first open and public peering facility with a national presence for network operators and ISP’s is now live, and free, running from its Cape Town, Johannesburg and Durban data centres. Peering is the process where Internet Service Providers (ISP) exchange traffic. NAPAfrica operates an exchange, which is the physical infrastructure through which the ISPs peer.

Advanced Discovery, an e-discovery company, has announced the opening of its New York data centre to further expand operations. The new facility will allow for local processing capabilities and will be staffed with local project management and business development personnel. Litigators and their clients have always dealt with discovery of documents. The evolution of discoverable electronically stored information (ESI) has posed significant opportunities and challenges for attorneys, their clients, technical advisers and the courts.

IO, the provider of next-generation modular data centre technology and services, announced today that they have been awarded a contract by The Juilliard School, the world-renowned performing arts conservatory.

As part of the agreement, IO will provide Juilliard with data centre as a service delivered out of the IO New Jersey data centre. This approach supplies Juilliard a high-performance, cost-effective solution – without having to invest resources in building and maintaining its own data centre.

Teraco is increasing its data centre presence in Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban with increased capacity and improved facilities. In June 2011, Teraco announced that it had completed R160 million ‘Series C’ financing. The financing included a combination of both equity and debt, with IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, becoming an equity shareholder in Teraco, and the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA) providing R80 million of senior debt. At the time, Teraco said that the financing would be used to further support its growth, and the results are starting to emerge.

Diversified industrial manufacturer Eaton has announced a cooperative agreement with STULZ Air Technology Systems. Through this agreement, Eaton will expand its data centre product portfolio by offering STULZ cooling technologies to its customers. Eaton’s enclosure, containment, and power management systems, paired with in-row and perimeter cooling solutions from STULZ, can enhance energy efficiency and reduce operating expenses in even the most challenging data centre environments.

United Bank, Ethiopia awarded the contract to upgrade its data centre, to Seven Seas Technologies Group, a Kenyan Technology firm. The contract estimated to be worth nine million birr stipulates that the work will be accomplished in four months.

The US$14.4-billion Mahindra Group has unveiled the widely anticipated merger of its two IT services firms, Tech Mahindra and Mahindra Satyam, creating a US$2.4-billion entity, which is poised to be India's fifth-largest software outsourcing company by revenue.

Tenue, a provider of centralized data centre services, is expanding its data centre business by building a new data centre in an old TS-Yhtymä printing house in Martinlaakso, Vantaa. The total constructed space including technical facilities to be built covers 6,000 sq m where colocation space totals approximately 4,000 sq m. This raises Tenue’s total data centre space to 8,000 sq m.

BTI Systems has announced that King International Resource Zone (KIRZ) has selected its advanced data centre interconnect solution to provide high-capacity, multiprotocol connectivity between KIRZ’s newly launched and existing data centres – enabling the rapidly growing, Thailand-based IT and solution provider to offer cost-effective colocation services and access to its customers.

Cumbria county council has decided not to outsource its ICT to Computacenter after the two organisations failed to finalise the terms of a proposed services contract. The deal would have delivered a data centre, service management and integration services, plus a managed enterprise network service for Cumbria and wholesale broadband services, which would be sold to business and residential consumers, as well as other public sector organisations.

Tata Communications has proposed to divest its international data centre business to a subsidiary to unlock its value and enable it to raise funds without putting a strain on the parent company. TCL has hired several organizations to deal with the matter, including McKinsey and Co. for strategy and business plans, Ernst and Young for structure and taxation issues, Kanga and Co. to assess real estate options, State Bank of India for fairness opinion, and Khaitan and Co. for companies Act-related issues.

Vigilent, a company that provides intelligent energy management systems for data centres, telecommunications facilities and large buildings, has raised US$6.7 million in investments led by Accel Partners. This investment is part of Accel’s new US$100 million Big Data fund. Angel investors including Gaurav Garg and Peter Wagner also participated in this round.

Peak 10, the data centre solutions company has announced the opening of its third enterprise-class facility contiguous with current operations in Nashville, Tenn. The 41,000 sq ft addition brings Peak 10 Nashville’s total campus footprint to 71,500 sq ft. In addition to the raised floor space, Peak 10 has added 26,000 square feet of customer workspace to the Nashville campus as part of its Workspace Recovery service.

In an era when mobile purchases on smartphones and tablets are expected to grow 73% to US$11.6 billion in the US this year, security is a necessary obsession at Visa’s data centre. Mobile payments are just a trickle of the more than 200 million daily transactions processed at Visa’s top-secret Operations Center East and at one other Visa data centre in North America.

Responding to increasing enterprise demand for managed and cloud infrastructure services, Latisys, a national provider of IT outsourcing solutions – from colocation to cloud – has announced the company is adding 72,000 sq ft of highly secure, high density, carrier grade IT infrastructure space along with significant power upgrades. Latisys’ total data centre footprint exceeds 500,000 sq ft across seven data centres in four major markets.

A founding director Leeds-based Backup Technology has successfully completed a management buyout of the business. With funding from Yorkshire Bank, Simon Chappell bought the firm, which he started in 2005 with partners Chris Powell and Ritchie Fiddes.

Internet Solutions and its parent Dimension Data have launched the IT group’s managed cloud services platform in SA, operating out of a new IS data centre in Randburg or at clients’ own data centres, if they so choose. The launch follows Didata’s acquisition last year of OpSource, a cloud specialist based in Santa Clara, California, and the group’s establishment of a centralised global cloud solutions business unit headed by former Didata Australia CEO Steve Nola.

ServerCentral, the Chicago-based data centre solutions company, has announced the opening of its 2.6 MW, 20,000 sq ft data centre expansion in Elk Grove Village, Illinois set within the multi-tenant data centre operated by DuPont Fabros Technology. It is ServerCentral’s fourth expansion within the facility since early 2009, bringing the footprint to more than 40,000 sq ft and 5.5 MW of critical load to support its infrastructure portfolio.

Sudlows, have been awarded the contract to design and build an extension to the existing data centre for primary care software provider Egton Medical Information Systems Ltd (EMIS).

DataBank Holdings, a custom data centre and colocation provider based in Dallas, has announced plans for development of a new data centre facility in North Dallas. DataBank’s construction plans have placed the facility opening in the fourth quarter of this year.

Expedient, a provider of colocation, cloud computing, managed hosting services and connectivity has kicked-off a significant expansion of their NEO 152 data centre within NEO Park, which was originally opened in October of 2009. The project will double the amount of data processing space at Expedient’s 2nd Cleveland data centre and will expand the current facility to a total of 21,000 sqft.

Oxford University has opened a dedicated cybersecurity research centre to work with the industry on fixing the types of security problems that companies deal with. The Cyber Research Centre will support research into anticipating, deterring, detecting, resisting and tolerating cybersecurity attacks, along with predicting cyber risks and to help people, companies, governments recover from attacks.

In Pennsylvania, The Board of Trustees have recently approved plans to build a combined data centre for the University and health system. The new 16,500 sq ft facility will be housed in the former DuPont Marshall Research Lab, a 25-acre property located at the South Bank on 34th Street and Grays Ferry Avenue.

In the latest development, the Victorian Government has announced that local data centres player Harbour MSP is set to commence operations from its A$15 million Melbourne data centre and network operations centre, creating 20 new highly skilled technology jobs in Victoria over the next four years. Harbour MSP, a data centre service provider specialising in fully-integrated colocation, private cloud and managed IT services, is a subsidiary of NTT Communications.