Tuesday, June 30, 2009

CoreSite Prepares 20,000 sq. ft In Their Chicago Data Center

I've always been pretty impressed with CoreSite (formerly CRG West). They've been a solid company, in the data center business for quite some time, and they stay innovative. A few months back they announced a partnership with Verari and the FOREST containers. Recently they re-branded to CoreSite, a Carlyle Company. I remember many years ago asking my boss who the Carlyle Group was, and he answered something like " a H U G E global private equity firm." Today Carlyle announced $1.04 Billion to support high growth in Asian businesses.

Once again proving Chicago to be a hot data center market, CoreSite announced today the completion of 20k square feet of new space at the downtown Chicago data center. The space provides 2MWs of power and immediate occupancy. The Lasalle site offers low latency and direct connectivity to major financial exchanges as well as multiple domestic and international carriers.

Equinix Wins Engergy Innovator Award

The Silicon Valley Leadership Group Energy Summit, held yesterday, gave Equinix the Power Energy Innovator Award. The ceremony held at Stanford recognized their nearly $1 million in rebates received from the city of Santa Clara for energy efficiency measures implemented. Equinix optimized efficiencies at its Silicon Valley 2 (SV2) data center.

"As a part of Equinix’s expansion at its SV2 center, the company implemented a variety of efficient procedures, such as installing air-side economizers that use the outside air to provide “free cooling” and drastically reduce the amount of mechanically produced cold air needed for the center. This system has resulted in energy savings of more than 4,000,000 kWh and $300,000 per year. Equinix also installed variable frequency drive (VFD) fans that allow for greater efficiency by operating at reduced fan speeds when there is a lower demand for air distribution."
Check out the press release here.

Equinix stock has done quite well the last 3 months, starting at $55.67 March 30th and then closing up 3.66 at $72.74 today. Analysts at Morgan Joseph initiated coverage of Equinix with a 'buy' rating, and set a target price of $100.

Wikinvest has some nice new features on their site -- worth a look!


Monday, June 15, 2009

Broadband Conduit Deployment Act of 2009

The Broadband Conduit Deployment Act of 2009, or H.R. 2428, would "require many of the so-called 'shovel-ready' projects funded by the stimulus bill earlier this year to also lay conduits capable of carrying fiber optic cables." Two Democratic Senators announced a measure today that would require states to build 'tubes' for internet fiber optic cables under every bit of highway they build or modify with with federal funds.

Check out the Wired.com article here

Data Centers In The Desert

Forbes has a very nice article on i/o Data Centers - the cool company in the hot Phoenix desert. They interview President Anthony Wanger and ask why the Phoenix area has been such a hot bed of activity for corporate data centers and i/o Data Centers growth.

Check out the article here

Thursday, June 11, 2009

Phoenix NAP

A 160k square foot retrofit will be the home of the first data center for Global Datacenter Trust. The company announced ground breaking for the facility, dubbed Phoenix NAP on Thursday. The facility will have more than 20 megawatts of power, 2N redundancy all the way back to the substation, a 3000 sq. ft meet-me room, and modular chilled water plants.

Although this is the first data center for GDCT -- they are a private equity firm made up of operational, networking and management professionals that have worked in the industry since the 1990's. "the difference" as they claim, is ping, power, pipe and people.

Check out their web site here and a Phoenix Business Journal article here

The facility is located just south of the airport in Phoenix, Arizona.



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Testing Cisco's Media-Centric Data Center

Lightreading.com has an excellent article about the tests they ran against Cisco IP video infrastructure, applications, and data. The report is broken out into the various areas and equipment, and disects the claims that Cisco makes on their hardware and software.

Storage Area Networks
Unified Fabric
Virtual Machine Relocation
Data Center Convergence
In-Service Software Upgrade
Control Plane Failover

Check out the report here

Tuesday, June 09, 2009

Tech Innovations Cool Data Centers

The Environmental Leader site has a nice story on data center cooling methods. The main part of the article talks about the GlaxoSmithKline data center in Brentford, UK that installed a water chiller cooled by the Grand Union Canal that runs along side the building.

The article also discusses Sentialla's Energy Manager For Data Centers. Very interesting read -- check it out here.

Cisco and Duke Energy Partner for Smart Grid Development

Cisco and Duke Energy announced a partnership today to fast-track the development of Duke Energy's smart grid. Duke serves 11 million people over 5 states and later this year will launch a five year mass deployment of smart grid technology.

"Cisco, working closely with Duke Energy, will develop a highly refined, end-to-end, smart grid communications architecture – one that both companies believe will be among the most comprehensive and interoperable in the electric utility industry."

Check out the press release here.

New Cisco Data Center For Allen, Texas

Cisco announced today that they will build a 140,000 - 160,000 square foot data center in Allen, Texas. The facility is reported to cost $500 Million, employ 100 people and (wait for it....) Cisco will receive tax incentives. Cisco stock closed up 1.06% today at $20.08

The Allen Economic Development Corporation has a nice report on the the Data Center proposal for the Stacy Road location that Cisco is most likely building on. Good power, fiber connectivity and financial incentives = data center site selection. The local utility for this area, Oncor announced last week that the "World's largest concentration of smart grid voltage compensation equipment placed in service by Oncor".

Allen Texas is about 25 miles north of downtown Dallas. There is also a sizable Cingular data center just a little bit south of the Cisco site in Allen.

Check out the press release here

Here is a map of the Allen, Texas data center site





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Monday, June 08, 2009

Qwest Nixes Plans To Sell Long-Haul Network

At an estimated value of around $4 Billion Qwest announced today confirming that they will not be selling their long-haul network. I have to agree with the Telecom Ramblings blog in that this was just a trial and if they didn't like the bids today, it won't stop them from reconsidering an offer later in the year.

Check out the Qwest Press Release here

There is a nice history lesson of the 1984 AT&T break-up and the resulting baby bells on the Wikinvest site.



Wednesday, June 03, 2009

Northern Indiana - Latest High-Tech Hub

Like I was saying in my last post -- the data center news is getting predictable:

____insert city name here____ is poised to become a high-tech hub, thanks to a change in state law that allows __________.

This time around: Northern Inidana, where they have passed a law that allows for personal property tax exemptions on data center equipment. The announcement is complete with benefits for Metronet, a quote from EYP Critical Facilities Servcies, and a the Senator who authored the bill.

Colocation and managed service provider Gramtel is located in South Bend, Indiana. Gramtel was acquired by Cincinnati Bell in January 2008.

It just shows how the data center industry continues to be a hot business and states are foaming at the mouth to get that business to locate in their state.

Check out the press release here.


I meant to mention this a few weeks back, but if you haven't checked out datacentermap.com lately ......CHECK it out! Sune has been busy on this site and the additions (since the last time I had seen it) are really cool. There are data center profiles, maps, tenants, connectivity and more!

Tuesday, June 02, 2009

North Carolina Passes Tax Code for Apple

Get ready for the shocking news... :) NC House passes tax code that could bring Apple data center. It seems like these mega data center announcements are pretty cookie-cutter as far as 'how' the deal goes down. Months and months of stealth mode, a "leak" of information, tax breaks written for data center "companies" and so on. The funny thing in this arstechnica article is that "the bill isn't tied to any particular company" and then a little later... "those conditions include investing $1 Billion dollars". :)

The Cliff Notes:
  1. $1 Billion data center
  2. 100 full time staff members initially
  3. up to $46 Million in tax credits over the next 10 years
  4. could save Apple $300 Million if the company operated the data center for 30 years

Check out the article here.