As data centre capacity in London is increasingly stretched and prices set to move higher, service providers are increasingly turning to assess other European city locations to expand their data centre facilities. Research by BroadGroup* suggests that major growth is expected in the French market but over the next two years. French companies, who in the past have resisted outsourcing and colocation appear to be showing increased interest in the concept, and while the deals in France take longer to negotiate than elsewhere, Data Centre operators interviewed remained optimistic.

The ANZ Bank has announced plans to open unmanned data centres, which will be operated remotely. The data centres will be patrolled by security guards however there will be no staff members. The bank will use packaged software to run the data centres. New customer relationship and investment systems will be installed as part of the project. ANZ Bank subsidiary Esanda will operate on the same platform as its parent company.

Global chemicals company Akzo Nobel has awarded offshore outsourcing company Wipro Technologies a three-year, multimillion-euro contract to manage its server infrastructure across Europe and the US. The Indian services company will consolidate Azko Nobel's data centres and implement stringent quality procedures to maintain and improve a wide range of business-critical applications such as SAP and Siebel. Akzo Nobel expects that the move will halve the company's data centre management costs.

A move to force telecoms firms to retain data on phone calls, e-mails and Internet use for 12 months for crime-busting purposes has been rejected by the European Parliament's Civil Liberties Committee. The Committee said the draft Framework Decision is too intrusive, too costly and has a flawed legal basis. France, the United Kingdom, Sweden and Ireland tabled this initiative in April 2004 and the EU Council of Ministers is currently debating it.

Isilon Systems, which builds storage systems with special software designed for companies that save large files, including digital images and other media formats has received US$ 20m in venture capital. A three-box cluster of Isilon's storage system can hold 14.4 terabytes of data (a terabyte is 1 trillion bytes of data). The system can be expanded to hold up to 168 terabytes in a single network drive. Founded in 2001, Isilon has raised US$59.9 million to date. The current round - the company's fourth - was led by Focus Ventures.

Following our report in last month's DCN, further details have emerged relating to Telehouse Europe's exit from the German colocation market. Its 3 facilities were sold to e-shelter, the Frankfurt based data centre operator. This now leaves Telehouse Europe with two facilities in Paris (rue des Je?neurs and Blvd. Voltaire) and three in London, with two in the Docklands on Coriander Avenue (13,470 sqft) and one in the City on Clifton Street. The sale of the German company follows on from the sale almost a year ago of Telehouse's Geneva facility to IXEurope.

IBM is rolling out Express versions of its blade server platform designed for small and medium size businesses. The company is bundling its Express middleware onto its BladeCenter offerings to create a blade environment that is designed to be easy to deploy and scalable. Express systems can be added onto in a modular fashion. The Express blades currently come in four starter configurations aimed at such areas as collaboration and business integration, and are available for Linux and Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating systems.