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Economy Boosts Colo, But Many Prefer to Build

Posted by admin On December - 9 - 2009 ADD COMMENTS

serversThe credit crunch has boosted adoption of colocation, as some companies who might normally have built their own data centers have instead leased colo space to conserve cash. But the majority of enterprise companies still want to build their own facilities, and will likely pursue either new construction or retrofits to meet their expansion needs in the next two years.

Those were some of the key points emerging from a session by Gartner analyst Lydia Leong at last week’s Gartner Data Center Conference in Las Vegas. Leong examined the expansion options available for companies with growing IT operations, and the economics influencing the choices in today’s data center marketplace.

“The colo market has seen a real upsurge over the past several years,” said Leong. “Colocation is where you go when you need space right now. Most people choose colo close to home, but it doesn’t have to be that way.”

National Search = Savings
She noted that colocation facilities vary in quality, meaning that it may sometimes be better to look outside your immediate area. “The greater your willingness to conduct a national search, the lower your costs will be,” Leong said. “We have providers who are terrible in one facility and great in another city. The difference is often the data center manager.”

The credit crunch has led many companies to forego data center construction projects that would require a significant outlay of capital. Some enterprises companies have opted for colocation, in which they lease cages or cabinets within a third-party data center.

Others have chosen wholesale data center space, in which tenants lease entire suites of data center space with dedicated power capacity. The wholesale market has been particularly attractive for fast-growing Internet companies, such as Facebook and Rackspace, who have been major players in the wholesale space. Most wholesale leases are in the seven to 10-year range, although Leong noted that a number of recent deals have featured five-year leases.

Both models have benefited from the credit crunch, which has made it harder for companies to borrow money. The tight capital market has meant closer scrutiny of construction requirements. In an instapoll of the audience, financial considerations were the top factor in company data center decisions.

Seven to 10-Year Lifespan
“If you want to be really honest, the lifetime of your data centers is 10 years, maybe only seven,” said Leong. “The cost effectiveness of a building with that lifespan is limited.” What about retrofits as opposed to ground-up “greenfield” construction. “The up-front investment is still pretty high,” said Leong. “These are for tenant improvements you’re going to make that you don’t own.”

Leong said the economics only make sense if a company needs at least 50,000 square feet of data center space.

But many attendees at the Gartner event appear undeterred, and say they will build their next data center. An audience poll found 34 percent indicating their preference for data center expansion in the next 24 months would be greenfield construction, followed by 31 percent preferring a retrofit. Twenty one percent cited colocation as their preference, followed by wholesale space at 15 percent.

Cloud Aptions Abound
What about cloud computing? “A lot of you will probably be thinking about cloud,” Leong said. “You’re going to have a wide range of options. Just about all the major outsourcers are building clouds. It will affect the way you think about servers, particularly if you have less than 50 servers. For most of you, the cloud will be a tactical option, and not your main option.”

What’s the number one mistake companies should beware of in planning data center expansions? Leong says it’s getting the power capacity right. “Power density is going to be your major limiting factor,” she said. “But most of you completely overestimate how much power you’re going to need. One of the best ways you can contain cost is by not overbuying power. If you overestimate your power needs, you can grotesquely inflate your costs.”

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Economy Boosts Colo, But Many Prefer to Build

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Roundup: Equinix, Telehouse, Polaris

Posted by Blogger On December - 9 - 2009 ADD COMMENTS

Here’s a roundup of data center headlines from around the world – Singapore, South Africa and Australia:

  • ACTIV expands to Equinix Singapore.  Equinix (EQIX) announced last week that ACTIV Financial, a provider of market data content and technologies, will expand operations to Equinix’s Singapore International Business Exchange (IBX) data center as a part of its global expansion.  Being in close proximity to the major trading venues and exchanges in Asia allows ACTIV to provide customers with low latency access to its high-volume market data services.  ACTIV currently leverages Equinix facilities in Chicago, New York, Frankfurt and London.  “ACTIV delivers more than one million updates per second including hard to process content such as equity options depth feeds, order book data, and the latest feeds from exchanges around the world,” said Timothy Neo, Managing Director, Asia Pacific, ACTIV Financial.
  • Photo tour of the Polaris Data Centre. Australian iTnews has a photo gallery of the Polaris Data Centre, built in the newly-developed town of Springsfield, Queensland.  The five story, $241 million data centre is among five data centres shortlisted by the Australian Federal Government.  The facility opened in January 2009 and houses equipment from companies such as NEC, HP, Suncorp and others.  Polaris was designed for 20 megawatts at full capacity, holds 1.5 million litres of water in onsite water tans, and is served by a dual ring of diverse dark fibre.  The iTnews article contains photos inside the Queensland data centre.
  • PIPE International selects Equinix Sydney.  Equinix (EQIX) announced that PIPE International has selected it as a key interconnect provider for its new PIPE Pacific Cable (PPC-1) undersea cable.  PIPE is also currently located in Equinx data centers in Tokyo and San Jose.  The newly laid PPC-1 undersea cable runs 6,900 km from Guam to the Equinix Sydney campus and has a capacity of 2.56 terabits per second.  “The new PPC-1 cable system will also enable our customers to increase the resilience of their international network and provide additional redundancy,” said Samuel Lee, President, Equinix Asia Pacific.
  • TeleHouse launches data center in South Africa. TELEHOUSE Europe, a subsidiary of KDDI announced that they will open the data center TELEHOUSE CAPE TOWN in Cape Town, Republic of South Africa.  KDDI is a large Japanese telecommunications provider that has been growing its business in developing countries; including a recent partnership with Bangladeshi bracNet.  TELEHOUSE Europe is a part of KDDI Group’s European local subsidiary and will be the first data center opened by a Japanese telecommunications carrier in Africa.  The new data center is based on a partnership between TELEHOUSE Europe and Teraco Data Environments, the first carrier-neutral data center in South Africa.

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Roundup: Equinix, Telehouse, Polaris

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DuPont Fabros Reveals Funding, New Leases

Posted by Blogger On December - 3 - 2009 ADD COMMENTS

The exterior of the DuPont Fabros Technology ACC5 data center in Ashburn, Va. during construction earlier this year. Facebook has pre-leased additional space in the facility.

The exterior of the DuPont Fabros Technology ACC5 data center in Ashburn, Va. during construction earlier this year. Facebook has pre-leased additional space in the facility.

Data center developer DuPont Fabros Technology (DFT) said today that it has arranged a $150 million loan that will allow it to finish its huge ACC5 data center in Ashburn, Virginia, where it has leased additional space. The company also plans to sell $550 million in notes to build a huge data center project in New Jersey and repay existing debt.

If successful, the debt sale would allow DuPont Fabros to bring new space online in the active New Jersey market without having to sell common stock. Management has expressed a preference to fund construction through debt rather than an equity offering that would dilute the holdings of current stockholders. The company’s confidence in its ability to find buyers for its debt may have been boosted by the successful sale of more than $400 million in debt by Terremark Worldwide earlier this year.

Leasing Remains Strong
DuPont Fabros’ effort to fund its growth has been boosted by the strong leasing activity in its core northern Virginia market. the company has now leased nearly two thirds of the ACC5 data center, where Net2EZ and Facebook have leased space. Today the company announced two new leases at ACC5, with one tenant signing a five-year lease for 1.138 megawatts (MW) of critical load , and another signing a 12-year deal for 2.275 MW.

Here’s an overview of the financial transactions DuPont Fabros announced today:

  • The company closed on a $150 million secured loan with a syndicate of lenders led by TD Bank. The loan, which is is secured by the ACC5 data center, has a five-year term at a floating rate of LIBOR plus 4.25% with a LIBOR floor of 1.50%. DuPont Fabros will use $25 million to repay a previous term loan secured by ACC5. DuPont Fabros will use the balance of the funds to complete construction on Phase II of ACC5, and set aside $10 million in reserve.
  • The new loan includes an “accordion” feature that allows new lenders to join the existing bank syndicate to increase the amount of the loan up to an additional $100 million if certain leasing and other covenants have been met. DuPont Fabros previously used an accordion feature to restructure loans used to build its Chicago data center.
  • DuPont Fabros also today announced that a subsidiary will offer $550 million in senior notes due 2017, a move designed to allow the company to complete construction on a planned 360,000 square foot data center complex in Piscataway, New Jersey, which was postponed last year. Company executives said recently that it would take approximately $75 million to restart construction in new Jersey and complete the project’s first phase. DFT will use the remaining funds from the note sale to repay $50 million that it borrowed to build its ACC4 data center, and pay off a loan for a planned project in Santa Clara, Calif., which is currently mothballed.

“We are pleased to have secured this loan in a challenging credit environment,” said Hossein Fateh, President and CEO of DuPont Fabros Technology. “This loan will allow us to continue to make progress on our development pipeline by completing Phase II of ACC5. We now expect that ACC5 Phase II will be placed in service in October 2010.”

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DuPont Fabros Reveals Funding, New Leases

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Roundup: SoftLayer, Power Loft, Level 3

Posted by Blogger On December - 2 - 2009 ADD COMMENTS

Here’s a roundup of some of some of this week’s headlines from the data center and hosting industry:

  • SoftLayer continues data center expansion. SoftLayer Technologies announced the opening of three new data center pods in the Dallas, Seattle and northern Virginia data centers.  The new pods add capacity for 20,000 additional servers, bringing total capacity to more than 45,000 servers. “These three new pods meet the customer demand increases that we expect in the very near future,” said Lance Crosby, CEO of SoftLayer. “And they are only preliminary measures in our growth strategy for 2010. We have some big plans which we can’t wait to share with everyone.”  SoftLayer has standardized on the pod architecture for data center design, allowing them to optimize space, power, network, personnel and internal infrastructure. The company recently announced that it was on track to report more than $80 million in revenue for 2009 and raised $20 million to fund the continued growth of the company.
  • Power Loft opens Virginia Data Center: Power Loft LLC announced the substantial completion of their first data center, Power Loft @ Innovation. Located in Prince William County, Virginia, this 225,000 square foot facility has signed an international IT technology outsourcing company as its anchor tenant, and was recently awarded the first Northern Virginia Technology Council’s Green Award. “Power Loft is in the forefront of creating energy efficient data center space,” said Bobbie Kilberg, President & CEO of the Northern Virginia Technology Council (NVTC).  “Having our company singled out to receive the NVTC Green Award, turned four years of hard work into a very unexpected night of celebration for us all,” said Jim Coakley, CEO of Power Loft LLC. “We are very
    proud to be so honored and we commend the NVTC for elevating the visibility of the many companies in Northern
    Virginia who are making an increasingly positive impact on our environment.”
  • Level 3 to support Clearwire’s 4G network. Level 3 Communications announced an expanded relationship with Clearwire Communications Tuesday to support their CLEAR 4G WiMax services.  The agreement provides Clearwire with network transport services as a part of their deployment of CLEAR WiMax services in major metropolitan markets across the United States. Level 3 will provide high speed connectivity to Chicago, Dallas, Philadelphia, Seattle, Washington D.C., Houston and the Bay area.   CLEAR 4G WiMax is a next generation mobile internet solution from Clearwire that claims to be 4 times faster than 3G.  Clearwire has been growing rapidly and in their third quarter 2009 results reported that 4G network coverage increased by 67% to over 10 million people.  They also recently had a $1.564 billion equity financing round. Is there a map for that? – you bet.

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Roundup: SoftLayer, Power Loft, Level 3

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Roundup: Ciena, Equinix, Rackspace

Posted by Blogger On November - 25 - 2009 ADD COMMENTS

Here’s a roundup of news announcements from the data center and hosting industry:

  • Ciena acquires Nortel Ethernet assets. Ciena Corporation announced that they were selected as the successful bidder in the auction for all of the optical networking and carrier Ethernet assets of Nortel’s Metro Ethernet Networks business.  Ciena has agreed to pay $769 million for the assets.  Ciena CEO Gary Smith said the purchase is “bringing together complementary technologies in switching and transport to create an innovative powerhouse with the scale to challenge the industry status quo and offer customers a practical path for transitioning to automated, optical Ethernet-based networking.”  In 2008 Nortel saw $1.36 billion in revenue from the assets to be acquired.
  • Equinix adds to European Ethernet Exchange.  Earlier in the month Equinix announced that submarine transport cable provider Hibernia Atlantic was expanding with Equinix in New York. Now European-based carriers Exponential-e and Tinet have signed up to participate in the recently announced Carrier Ethernet Exchange platform.  The initial deployment locations include London, New York, Chicago and Silicon Valley.  The goal of the project is to provide Ethernet Network to Network Interconnections (E-NNI).  VP of Engineering at Exponential-e Mukesh Bavisi said “Equinix already plays a strategic role in our peering relationships with other Tier 1 service providers, so it is a natural choice that we leverage its carrier-rich interconnection hubs to develop an Ethernet interconnection infrastructure.”  According to Infonetics Research demand for carrier Ethernet services is set to double within five years.
  • Rackspace offers complete Verisign SSL lineRackspace announced that they expanded an agreement with Verisign allowing them to directly sell, install and renew Verisign SLL Certificates to their customers.  Additionally the entire line of certificates is now available as a self-service option via the MyRackspacecom customer portal.  “Trust is the most valuable currency on the Internet today, and trust is what VeriSign SSL and EV SSL protection delivers for Web site operators the world over,” said Michael Lin, vice president and general manager of SSL at VeriSign.

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Roundup: Ciena, Equinix, Rackspace

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Report: New Colocation Space Fills Quickly

Posted by admin On November - 23 - 2009 ADD COMMENTS

New colocation space is filling quickly when brought online, according to new data from the telecom research firm TeleGeography. Global colocation service providers surveyed by TeleGeography have added 1.66 million square feet (154,016 square meters) of new space since the beginning of 2008, many of which were more than 50 percent full by mid-year 2009.

“While ample capacity is available in aggregate, operators in some cities, such as London, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, reported fill rates of more than 80 percent” for their colocation footprints, TeleGeography said in announcing an update of its Colocation Database, one of the company’s paid services.

“Despite a global capital crunch, capacity growth has not stagnated, and operators with strong operational cash flow continue to build new sites,” it reports. The markets with the most new colocation supply have been Hybderabad, India (230,000 square feet), Washington/Northern Virginia (214,000 SF), Dallas (166,000 SF), Amsterdam (150,000 SF) and London (131,000 SF), according to TeleGeography.

The report also includes data on average power density per rack, which suggests that colocation providers are continuing to build ahead of the average power loads. “Colocation operators increasingly push boundaries in the installation of new high-density space (defined as space using at least 14 kilowatts of power per rack), but low-density spacecontinues to supply a majority of the market,” Telegeography writes. “The average colo site density among sites surveyed is about 3.8 kilowatts per rack, and major metro areas generally do not veer far from this average.”

Average density rates can be misleading when it comes to the potential business value of high-density space, however, as the average can include several high-density customers whose impact is broadly offset by customers with lower densities. In practice, the availability of space engineered for higher densities is crucial to capturing these deals, which can feature high-value customers.

The markets with the highest average densities were Chicago (5 kW average per cabinet) and Dallas (4.5 kW average).

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Report: New Colocation Space Fills Quickly

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A Standard for Data Center Containers?

Posted by Blogger On November - 18 - 2009 ADD COMMENTS

The interior of a 40-foot container inside the new Microsoft Chicago data center, packed with servers on either side of a center aisle (click to see a larger version of this image).

The interior of a 40-foot container inside the new Microsoft Chicago data center, packed with servers on either side of a center aisle.

One of the keys to the success of shipping containers is standardization, as detailed by author Marc Levinson, whose book explains how containers “made the world smaller and the world economy bigger.” Standardizing on a 40-foot size spurred the international growth of intermodal freight transport by either rail, ship or truck.

Is there a similar boom in store for data center containers? That may depend on whether the industry can agree on a standard for modular designs, including those using containers. Microsoft, for one, is doing its best to nudge the data center industry toward the use of standard Pre-Assembled Components (PACs), which is how the company describes the server-filled containers in its new Chicago data center.

Some may see Microsoft’s “container farm” as an outlier – an anomaly representing a particular approach unlikely to be replicated in other data centers. Could Microsoft’s effort instead represent a tipping point in a broader movement towards modular data center design? The company’s cloud operation is large enough to focus vendors’ attention on the concept, which could result in an ecosystem that lowers costs for end users.  

‘Standard Platform’
Microsoft aspires to create a container-based “standard platform that our industry can innovate around,” providing common interfaces and an RFP (request for proposal) process that allows many vendors to develop products and compete for business.

But Microsoft isn’t alone in this effort, and some industry executives warn that Microsoft’s vision of a containerized future may not work for everyone. Two other industry heavyweights, Digital Realty Trust and IBM, are also standardizing their designs around modular systems and repeatable designs that can drive the cost and delays out of data center construction, while leveraging the power of bulk purchasing and RFPs with large numbers attached to them.

Server-filled containers are just the beginning of Microsoft’s PAC strategy, according to Microsoft’s Daniel Costello, who said the company will also issue RFPs for containerized electrical and mechanical equipment. “For us, it’s about pre-manufactured modularization,” said Costello. “The same thing that’s happened to servers will happen to the back of the house.”

What happened with servers? When a company buys 2,000 servers at a time, server markers pay attention. And when a company plans to repeat that purchase 100 times, vendors begin jumping through hoops.

Container Competition Heats Up
When Microsoft announced its plan for a container data center in Chicago, only Sun Microsystems, Rackable Systems (SGI) and Verari had container products. With Microsoft planning to fill the Chicago site with between 250,000 and 400,000 servers – at a time when enterprise server sales were slowing – the container competition heated up as IBM, HP and Dell soon offered their own “data center in a box” offerings.

“We’re trying to create an ecosystem,” said Microsoft data center architect Christian Belady. “Think about a world where everyone is doing this. It’s truly about commoditization. We don’t have any problem with (vendors) knocking on our doors. Ultimately, what will drive acceptance is cost.”

Cost is also the driving factor in Digital Realty Trust’s push toward an “industrialization” of data center design and construction, featuring pre-assembled or modular components that can be quickly brought together at a construction site. Digital Realty has built more than 1 million square feet of Turn-Key Datacenter space and now operates more than 80 mission-critical buildings.

Who Sets the Standard?
The industry has a way to go before the vision of “one size fits many” modular data centers can come together, according to Digital Realty’s Michael Manos, who previously worked on the Microsoft team that planned the Chicago facility.

“There is no set industry standards when it comes to data center containers,” Manos wrote in a recent blog post. “This means that each vendor might have their own approach on what goes in, and what stays out of the container.

“Some look to the widely publicized Microsoft C-Blox specification as a potential basis for a standard,” Manos adds. “This is their internal container specification that many vendors have configurations for, but you need to keep in mind that’s based on Microsoft’s requirements and might not meet yours. Until the Green Grid, ASHRAE, or other such standards body starts looking to drive standards in this space, its probably something to be concerned about.”

IBM, meanwhile, is building data centers for clients based on four modular designs – including a container – that Big Blue announced in 2008. A growing number of vendors are offering containerized mechanical and electrical equipment, including the PowerHousefrom Active Power (ACPW) and modular chillers from MultiStack.

While the cost benefits of modularity and PACs are intriguing, not all the players in the data center business can bring the same bulk-purchasing power to bear as Microsoft or Digital Realty.

Microsoft is sharing its process because it believes the benefits can drive better efficiencies for the entire data center industry. “Every one of these vendors who sell to use can sell the designs to other customers,” said Costello. “We ‘d be ecstatic if they sold it to someone else.”

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A Standard for Data Center Containers?

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Microsoft’s Windows Azure Cloud Container

Posted by Blogger On November - 18 - 2009 ADD COMMENTS

Microsoft’s cloud container continues to evolve. The company has unveiled the next generation of its data center container at its Windows Professional Developers Conference, and it includes significant design advances over the existing containers deployed in Microsoft’s Chicago data center.

The 20-foot container on display at the PDC is an example of Microsoft’s Generation 4 Modular Data Center design, which abandons the raised-floor architecture that has been a staple of modern data center design in favor of a container-based model. Microsoft says the use of server-packed containers – known as Pre-Assembled Components (PACs) – will allow it to slash the cost of building its new data centers, which will have no roofs.

Optimized for Outdoors?
The Generation 4 container on display at PDC looks to be completely optimized for outdoor use, with a design that relies upon fresh air (”free cooling”) rather than air conditioning. While we’re not on-site at PDC and haven’t been able to inspect the container, it features louvers on the exterior of the container to draw fresh air into the cold aisle and expel hot air from the rear of the hot aisle. Here’s a look at a video of the container shot by a PDC attendee:

The container features the branding for Windows Azure, Microsoft’s developer-focused cloud computing platform. Windows Azure will run at facilities in Chicago, San Antonio, Dublin, Amsterdam, Singapore and Hong Kong.

This is a departure from the current Microsoft container design, which features one container filled with IT gear and another holding the power and cooling infrastructure. Here’s a look at one of the double-decker data center containers currently in use at Microsoft’s  Chicago data center:

microsoft-chicago-containers

Microsoft’s $500 million Chicago facility uses a hybrid design built around data center containers. The lower level is a vast space with a high ceiling and diagonal parking spaces for the 40-foot container stacks.

The first phase of the 700,000 square foot facility can hold up to 56 containers, and a second phase (currently shell space) offers identical capacity. That gives the Chicago facility a total capacity of 112 containers holding 224,000 servers.

In laying out its Generation 4 design, Microsoft said its future data centers would require no water and have no roofs. The company says the new design may reduce capital investments by 20 to 40 percent by creating a “competitive and innovative supplier landscape.” It is also designed to accelerate Microsoft’s data center deployment process, shrinking the timeline from 18 months to as little as three to six months.

RELATED STORIES:

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Microsoft’s Windows Azure Cloud Container

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Roundup: Amazon, Hurricane Electric, Level 3

Posted by admin On November - 13 - 2009 ADD COMMENTS

Here’s a roundup of news announcements from the data center and hosting industry:

  • Amazon Web Services Asia Expansion.  Amazon Web Service announced Thursday that an expansion of their services into an Asia-Pacific region will take place in the first half of 2010, when developers and businesses will be able to access infrastructure services from multiple availability zones in Singapore, with other zones in Asia following in the second half of 2010.  AWS services included at launch will be Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), Amazon Simple Storage (S3), SimpleDB, Relational Database Service (RDS), Simple Queue Service (SQS), MapReduce and CloudFront.  Pricing for web services in Asia will be announced when launched in 2010.
  • Hurricane Electric Expands Infrastructure at Equinix.  Internet backbone and IPv6 provider Hurricane Electric will extend its presence to additional Equinix data centers outside of the United States. Hurricane Electric will expand into Equinix Tokyo-2, Hong Kong-1 and Zurich-1 facilities.  Citing an increasing demand for IPv6 content in Asia and Europe as a reason for global expansion, the Hurricane Electric presence in global Equinix data centers will also allow other Equinix customers to easily exchange IP traffic with more than 500 associated IPv6 backbones.  Equinix chief marketing officer Jarrett Appleby said “operating also within our TY2, HK1 and ZH1 centers will put Hurricane Electric in the middle of an existing community of international and local networks and carriers for its next generation IP access service.”
  • Level 3 expands in Atlanta. Level 3 announced Thursday an expansion of operations and enhancing local presence in the Atlanta area.  The initiative will provide mid-market enterprises with greater access to Level 3’s services via its extensive backbone network, metro fiber-optic footprint, and a locally focused sales and customer support team.  Level 3 will expand the network in the Atlanta area that already passes nearly 15,000 businesses today.  Following their “link globally and connect locally” mantra, the move will allow Level 3 to provide a competitive alternative for Atlanta area businesses.  Level 3 has announced similar focused expansions in Chicago, Miami and New York in recent months.

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Roundup: Amazon, Hurricane Electric, Level 3

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McHugh Plans Major Chicago Data Center

Posted by Blogger On November - 11 - 2009 ADD COMMENTS

A design concept for a six-story, 300,000 square foot data center in Chicago proposed by McHugh Construction.

A design concept for a six-story, 300,000 square foot data center in Chicago proposed by McHugh Construction.

McHugh Construction Co. has announced plans to build a major data center in downtown Chicago, just blocks from the city’s major Internet connectivity hub. The Chicago-based company has asked city officials to approve a six-story, 300,000 square foot data center project at 2222 South Indiana Avenue, adjacent to the McCormick Place convention center and 350 East Cermak Road, the enormous carrier hotel operated by Digital Realty Trust.

The project revives a plan for a data center at the site, which was first proposed in 2001 but shelved after the dot-com bust left an oversupply of data center space. In 2008 McHugh tried to sell the site for possible use as a hotel or entertainment complex to support the convention center. But the credit crunch made it difficult to finance those types of projects, and with demand for data center space in downtown Chicago remaining strong, McHugh revisited the data center concept.

Supply Running Low
A likely factor in the decision is the dwindling amount of space remaining at 350 East Cermak, which spans 1.1 million square feet but is 95.9 percent occupied as of Sept. 30, according to Digital Realty. The only other building in downtown Chicago with space for large footprints available is the CoreSite building at 427 South LaSalle Street.

The supply of data center space in downtown Chicago is running low at a time when demand remains strong, driven largely by financial firms’ appetite for additional capacity for fast-growing electronic trading operations.

The planning board has not yet considered McHugh’s proposal, which seeks to reduce the number of required parking spaces at the site from 156 to just 20, reflecting the lower foot traffic at data centers. But McHugh has outlined details of the project in meetings with community leaders. Architectural drawings show that McHugh hopes to gain certification under the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) program for energy efficient buildings.

Design Features Louvers, Solar Power
The design drawings include louvers along the side of the building, a feature often used to support fresh air cooling. The plans calls for a rooftop solar power installation, with about 8,300 square feet of photovoltaic panels. That’s not large enough to cover the power requirements of most data center tenants, but could help earn LEED points for on-site generation and be attractive to companies grooming their power footprints to add more renewable sources.

The drawings also feature a “green roof” with vegetation covering about 10,000 square feet. The design calls for diesel generators to be housed inside the lower floor, which will reduce the noise profile of the building, which is often a concern for large data centers in densely-populated urban areas.

McHugh had its headquarters on the property from 1970 to 2002, when the company moved to 1737 South Michigan Ave.

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McHugh Plans Major Chicago Data Center

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