With Facebook's first data centre in Prineville up and running and a second being built next door, local officials are looking to cement central Oregon as a hub for data centres.  The Bend Bulletin reports that Apple has plans to open a small data centre nearby, and bought 160 acres from the city of Prineville for US$5.6 million in February. Another data centre - code-named Jasper - is in the works, but power utility and economic development officials will not say what company is behind it.

Internet Initiative Japan one of Japan's leading Internet access and comprehensive network solutions providers, has acquired the stocks of Exlayer Global from its existing shareholders. Exlayer Global is a holding company with overseas subsidiaries in the system integration industry. The newly acquired company will begin its operation as IIJ's subsidiary under the name IIJ Exlayer Inc.

IBM has announced that it is to build its third Chinese’s data centre in the Jiloin province of that country. The centre once it is built, will provide cloud computing services for Liaoyuan, Northeastern China, and Inner Mongolia.

The company currently has two other cloud data centres in China, located in Langfang City in Hebei province and another in Wuxi, Jiangsu province. The first of which is the largest centre of its kind in China.

Computer maker Dell has announced its intention to acquire thin client marketshare leader Wyse, for an undisclosed figure. The acquisition reflects Dell's continued transition from a PC manufacturer to an enterprise IT systems and services vendor.

Equinix, a provider of global data centre services, has announced that construction of phase two of its third Sydney International Business Exchange data centre has begun six months ahead of schedule. Driven by high demand for premium colocation and interconnection services from cloud and financial service providers, Equinix is investing an additional US$50 million into the expansion of SY3, doubling the number of cabinets to 2,000. The expansion capital required is already reflected in the company’s 2012 guidance.

Tieto, Finland’s largest software company at €1.8 billion, is planning to expand in consulting and systems integration segment to get revenue from designing new applications.  The Helsinki-based company’s Indian arm, Tieto India, employs 1,600 staff at its two centres in Pune and Bangalore. “In the initial phase of strategy, Tieto will focus on building the platform for offering full cycle of IT services in consulting and system integration segment,” Kimmo Alkio, president and CEO, Tieto, said.

Xand and Access Northeast have announced that they have merged to form one of the largest privately held data centre companies in the Northeast. The newly combined entity operates facilities in three states, New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts, serving nearly 1,000 customers with colocation, cloud and managed services across the region.

Dell has acquired computer services provider Clerity Solutions to help customers reduce the expenditure of transferring their business-critical applications and data from old computing systems to modern architectures, including the cloud.

Skype has announced that it plans to create 400 new vacancies across five cities, initially recruiting in London and Stockholm.  The fast growing voice and video calling over internet business will also later create posts in Tallinn, Estonia; Prague, Czech Republic; and Palo Alto in California.

Infoblox, which provides appliances and software to enable next-generation data centers, has  announced terms for its IPO. The Santa Clara, CA-based company plans to raise US$98 million by offering 7.5 million shares (23% insider) at a price range of US$12 to US$14.

At the midpoint of the proposed range, Infoblox would command a market value of US$662 million. Infoblox, which was founded in 1999 and booked US$152 million in sales for the 12 months ended 1/31/2012, plans to list on the NYSE under the symbol BLOX.

Microsoft plans to build a new data centre, this time in Cheyenne, Wyoming. It won't be considered a "mega data centre," but it will cost US$112 million to build. Microsoft said initially it will employ 17 people to work there but ultimately it will need 40 people. The facility is expected to open in the spring of 2013.

IT services company Patni Computer Systems on Tuesday posted a decline of 13.56% in its standalone net profit at Rs 152.77 crore for the quarter ended March 31. It had registered a net profit of Rs 176.75 crore in the same quarter last year. The company's standalone income during the period under review increased marginally at Rs 547.49 crore from Rs 542.72 crore in same period last year, it said in a filing to the BSE.

tw telecom, a leading provider of managed services, has announced it has expanded its colocation facilities in Minnetonka, Minnesota (near Minneapolis/St. Paul) in anticipation of continued growth and demand. The company has two colocation facilities in the Twin Cities with nearly 100,000 sq ft

A Gwent council will have to pay out £173,000 on equipment and building costs for a data centre that is currently the subject of a police investigation. Monmouthshire cabinet members were asked on Wednesday to allow for this money to be spent on costs relating to the Shared Resource Service in Blaenavon. The £3 million Shared Resource Service was designed to house the data for Monmouthshire and Torfaen councils and Gwent Police and was opened by First Minister Carwyn Jones last year.

BT has announced the signature of a global managed networked IT services contract with Anglo American, one of the world’s largest diversified mining companies. The contract covers all Anglo American’s networking requirements at several hundred locations around the world and is valued at approximately US$220 million over the next 5 years.

Seattle-based Sabey Data Center Properties will dedicate at least 20% of an estimated total of $120 million in construction contracts for its 1 million sq ft data centre, now under construction in lower Manhattan, to minority and women-owned business enterprises (M/WBEs), and disadvantaged businesses.

The University of Western Sydney and University of Technology, Sydney have kicked off a joint project to outsource their primary data centres following separate reviews of their IT strategies. Tender documents issued last week indicated that the University of Technology, Sydney sought to improve its IT infrastructure and capacity planning by moving its production environment to a “modern data centre facility”.

Cologix, a network neutral interconnection and colocation company, has announced the expansion of their Dallas InfoMart (1950 North Stemmons Freeway) footprint to 40,000 sq ft. The addition of 12,000 sq ft of Tier 3 data centre space will accommodate growing demand for colocation solutions that require dense connectivity. The data centre will include over 300 new cabinets and is scheduled to be ready for service in Q3 2012.

IT bellwether Infosys has reported a 27.4% jump in consolidated net profit at Rs 2,316 crore for the fourth quarter ended March 31, 2012.  This is against a net profit of Rs 1,818 crore reported in the January-March quarter of the last fiscal (2010-11), Infosys said in a filing to the BSE. However, on a quarter-on-quarter basis, the net profit declined by 2.4%. Revenues rose 22% to Rs 8,852 crore for the quarter from Rs 7,250 crore in the year-ago period.

Technology entrepreneurs in London are suffering from a lack of 'smart' investors, according to a venture capitalist (VC) firm. This is why European entrepreneurs are looking for investment in Silicon Valley, rather than the UK, Charles Irving, co-founder of VC firm Pond Ventures, told delegates at the InnoTech Summit in London.

Midas Medici Group Holdings, a Brazil-focused provider of data centre and cloud computing solutions, withdrew its plans for an initial public offering on Friday, citing poor market conditions.

The New York, NY-based company, which was founded in 2006, filed in February to raise US$29 million. No underwriters were listed in the initial filing.

Source: Renaissance Capital

One of Australia’s largest rail network operator, Queensland Rail, is consolidating its data centres under a US$34 million (AU$33 million) infrastructure management initiative. Queensland Rail, which split from the privatised freight arm QR National last year, is streamlining data centre management, network and end-user computing services.

Peak 10, a data solutions company, has announced the opening of its second Fort Lauderdale data centre.

The Charlotte, N.C.-based company has added 11,000 sq ft of data centre space to its facility, bringing its total raised-floor footprint to 66,000 sq ft locally. “Our growth has dictated additional expansion,” said Regional VP Stefan Pittinger. “The South Florida IT community has really embraced us and just raw demand has created the need to expand in South Florida.”

The government is mulling putting up an upgraded National Data Center to boost its internal efficiencies and compliment the current centre which is already operating at full capacity. 

State-run BSNLhas launched its Internet data centres (BSNL IDC) in partnership with Dimension Data and is targeting revenues of Rs 100 crore in the first year.  BSNL will offer managed colocation, managed hosting and cloud services through these IDCs, which have been built by Dimension Data for BSNL.

IT services firm HCL Technologies has posted a 28.7% increase in net profit at Rs. 602.5 crore for the quarter ended March 31, 2012. The company had posted a net profit of Rs. 468.2 crore in the January-March quarter of the last fiscal (2010-11), HCL Technologies said in a statement.  The company's revenues for the reported quarter were up 26% at Rs. 5,215.6 crore from Rs. 4,138.2 crore in Q3 of FY11.

The Australian Securities Exchange will share the three-story building set aside for its co-location offerings with another company, after scaling back its lease arrangements last year. The exchange initially planned to lease a three-storey building at the Gore Hill Business Park on Sydney’s north shore at a cost of A$62.5 million over 12 years.

Landsvirkjun, Iceland’s national power company has announced its aim to power 1% of the European data centre industry with electricity from renewable hydroelectric and geothermal sources by the year 2020. The estimated electric energy needed to achieve this target is around 1.5 TWh, about 10% of the company´s current generation.

International Business Machines Corp.'s first-quarter earnings jumped 7.1% as the tech heavyweight reported higher revenue from its software and technology services business, but lower hardware sales. The 6.7% slip in hardware sales contributed to the company reporting weaker-than-expected revenue, sending shares lower in after-hours trading. Chief Financial Officer Mark Loughridge blamed the second straight quarterly decline in hardware revenue on a difficult year-ago comparison.

Midas Medici Group Holdings, a global provider of managed IT services, data centres, IT infrastructure and consulting services, has announced record financial results for the period ended December 31, 2011.

FY 2011 Highlights  included Net revenues increase a record 73.7% to US$89.7 million;15% of net revenue growth organic and 85% of net revenue growth from acquisitions and International operations contributed US$32.5 million or 36% to consolidated net revenues

Compass Datacenters, a new data centre provider formed by Chris Crosby, the industry visionary who helped build Digital Realty, has nveiled its business strategy which makes dedicated modular data centres a reality for the 98% of the market not served by current wholesale data centre providers.

Ascent Corp. has closed on US$107 million in debt financing to fund the expansion of data centre suites in Chicago and other markets. The money, lent by a group led by Bank of America Merrill Lynch, will finance the Olivette-based company's offering of such suites, which are individual data centres contained in a larger facility, such as Ascent's CH2 data centre in Chicago.

Founded in 1998, Ascent develops designs and operates data centres. It employed 115 people at the end of last year.

Volta, the specialist provider of data centres to the financial, media and content industries, has revealed plans for its first data centre in Central London. The data centre will be based in the iconic former Reuters building in Great Sutton Street EC1.

Indian global IT services company Mahindra Satyam will invest S$300 million (US$240) over three years in research and development and the majority of the investments will flow into the Asia Pacific region, said the company's CEO, C.P. Gurnani, at a media briefing today in Singapore.

The IT company that is awaiting government approval for its merger with Tech Mahindra is geared up for growth. We are bullish on our prospects and are expecting 30% growth from the Asia market, said Gurnani. 

Tata Communications will not make a formal offer to purchase Cable & Wireless Worldwide the company said Wednesday, a move that makes the sole bidder for the UK-based wireline service provider. Tata, which decided to make a bid for CWW in early March, said that its decision came after it could not agree on the purchase price,

While the Brazilian government's recently announced tax breaks for telecom infrastructure equipment are a welcomed start, they must be widened to include data centres, according to Japanese structured and fibre optic cabling manufacturer Furukawa.

Leighton Contractors' data centre operator subsidiary, Metronode's new Victorian data centre has become the second in Australia to be awarded tier III accreditation by the Uptime Institute.Metronode's general manager, Malcolm Roe, said: "This accreditation provides our customers with real certainty of the reliability and uninterruptible availability - uptime - of our facilities and supports our commitment to providing world-leading environmentally friendly data centres."

Winvale, a leading government technology solutions provider, focuses on identifying and integrating emerging technologies that solve the government’s mission critical needs, just announced a new partnership with Prime Care Technologies (PCT) and QTS (Quality Technology Services). PCT is a national provider of cloud computing services.

Ascenty Telecom, part of the Ascenty Group, has started operations, aiming to provide corporate customers with an optical network infrastructure and data centres. The operator is controlled by Great Hill Partners, a former shareholder of Vivax (today Net) and Buscape. The fund holds US$5 billion under management and promises to invest BRL 50 million in the optical network of Ascenty Telecom, which will go through Sao Paulo, Campinas, Jundiai, ABC Paulista, Barueri and cities in the region.

During the opening ceremony of a data centre of Hewlett Packard in Sofia, President Rossen Plevneliev said Bulgaria could become a world IT player. The president added that industries of the future along with traditional sectors like tourism must be developed in Bulgaria.

The centre in Sofia is the first of its kind in Europe and will provide employment to highly qualified Bulgarian experts, who will control processes critical for the work of companies in different spheres like finance and telecommunication

CoreSite Realty, a national provider of powerful, network-rich data centres, has announced that the company has purchased Comfluent, a carrier-neutral, network-centric colocation provider, located in Denver, Colorado.

Strong demand for Cloud services, bandwidth and infrastructure grew Interoute's top-line revenues in 2011 to €366 million for the year, a 24% increase over the same period in 2010. Interoute Communications Ltd, owner and operator of Europe's largest cloud services platform, boosted EBITDA by 16.5% to €68m. Despite substantial investments in new services and expanded infrastructure, the Company increased profitability, to €7.6 million.

Tata Consultancy Services, the country's largest IT services provider, reported a 3.28% increase in its quarter-on-quarter net profit to Rs 2,894.93 crore for the quarter ended March 31, 2012. In the previous quarter its net profit was Rs 2,802.77 crore.The company's q-o-q revenue rose marginally at Rs 13,259 crore from Rs 13,204./

For the year ended March 31, the company posted a consolidated net profit of Rs 10,413 crore, up 14.83% from Rs 9,068 crore over the year-ago period.

US software and solutions company CA Technologies has set up its Asia innovation unit at its development centre here in partnership with the International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad (IIIT-H).

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 fiscal year 2011-12.

Highlights included revenue for the year ended March 31, 2012 was INR 7742 million; Revenue from Enterprise services was at INR 6681 million, up approximately 16% over last year and revenue from Software services was at INR 671 million, up approximately 11% over last year.

Equinix, a provider of global data centre services, has reported quarterly results for the quarter ended March 31, 2012. The Company uses certain non-GAAP financial measures, which are described further below and reconciled to the most comparable GAAP financial measures after the presentation of our GAAP financial statements. Revenues were US$452.2 million for the first quarter, a 5% increase over the previous quarter and a 25% increase over the same quarter last year.

IBM announced a definitive agreement to acquire Vivisimo, a leading provider of federated discovery and navigation software that helps organizations access and analyze big data across the enterprise. Vivisimo is a privately held company based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Charlotte data centre company Peak 10 will nearly double its footprint in the city with a new 62,000-sq ft facility in the University Research Park area, officials have announced. Peak 10 operates data centres for small- to mid-sized businesses that can’t afford down time or lost data. The privately-held company has flourishedsince relocating to Charlotte with 11employees in 2000, as smart phone use, payment processing and other data-heavy sectors boomed.

Amgen and the Irish Government have announced the start of a $200 million-plus expansion programme in Ireland that is expected to result in the creation of 100 jobs. The Taoiseach, Enda Kenny T.D. and the Tánaiste, Eamon Gilmore T.D. officiated at the ground-breaking ceremony, marking the commencement of a major construction programme at the Amgen plant at Pottery Road, in Dun Laoghaire, Co Dublin.  The investment is supported by the Irish Government through IDA Ireland. 

Digital Realty Trust, a leading global provider of data centre solutions, has announced financial results for the first quarter of 2012.

Internap Network Services, a leading provider of IT infrastructure services, has announced financial results for the first quarter of 2012. Highlights included : Revenue of US$67.0 million compared with US$59.4 million in the first quarter of 2011; Segment profit of US$35.9 million; segment margin of 53.5 %, up 240 basis points year-over-year;  Adjusted EBITDA of US$12.2 million; adjusted EBITDA margin of 18.3%.

DuPont Fabros Technology has reported results for the quarter ended March 31, 2012.

Colt, Europe’s leading information delivery platform, has announced its first modular data centre deployment in the Netherlands on a 39,000 m2 site. Colt will initially deploy 2,000 m2 of data centre space at the site, before increasing its capacity to 20 halls over 10,000 m2. With a significant anchor tenant already ecured, Colt expects to commence operations at the new carrier neutral data centre in early 2013.

Bull, the French IT services group has released its first quarter results. Revenues for the period have risen 5.8%t to €286.5 million driven by increasing demand for cloud computing services. In addition the group’s order intake by 6.7% to €334.4 million over the period.

The Tamana InTech Park has attracted a US$40 million North American Information and Communication Technology investor who intends to build a data centre in T&T. Construction of the ICT centre on the 1,100 acres park—which is under the Evolving TecKnologies and Enterprise Development (eTecK) control—is expected to take place in July.