SolidNode

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.”

Original post:
DuPont Fabros Reveals Funding, New Leases

Popularity: 6% [?]

Writing about data centers, it’s easy to equate the Internet with huge cold rooms packed with servers. The December issue of Wired offers a different perspective in a visual tour of points on the Internet’s path across North America. This includes prominent carrier hotels (yep, 60 Hudson Street) and data centers (Terremark’s NAP of the Capital Region) but also the right-of-ways and cable landings that support the digital economy (link via Ilissa Miller).

Original post:
The Internet, From Sea to Shining Sea

Popularity: unranked [?]

Just weeks after announcing a focus on seeking acquisition opportunities, managed hosting provider Terremark Worldwide (TMRK) has acquired DS3 DataVaulting for $11.5 million in cash, the company said today. DS3 provides customers with offsite, online data backup and restore services which enable enterprises and government agencies to rapidly and securely backup and restore files, databases and operating systems. The company is based in Fairfax, Va. and was founded in 2002.

“Acquiring DS3 enhances our overall data storage offering and helps us accelerate the development of our solutions in the area of managed storage, which is a key growth opportunity driven by the escalating data demands created by new technologies and increasingly stringent regulatory compliance,” said Marvin Wheeler, Terremark’s Chief Strategy Officer.

“Combining DS3’s innovative backup and restore offerings with our existing suite of services and top-tier, highly connected facilities significantly adds to the value that our data storage solutions provide to enterprises and Federal government agencies,” said Wheeler. “We also expect to realize cost synergies by relocating DS3’s infrastructure to our world-class data centers and eliminating the need to outsource some of our data storage services.”

DS3 provides local and remote business continuity services, coupled with innovative backup archive tiers and data discovery capabilities. Terremark said DS3’s managed storage solution was “an ideal strategic fit” with Terremark’s existing set of managed services. DS3’s customer list includes enterprise and government customers, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

“By adding our talented team of professionals and their strong industry relationships to a company that shares our commitment to quality customer service, we believe that we will maximize the impact our solutions can have,” said Stacy Hayes, President of DS3. “We’re excited to join the Terremark family and offer Terremark’s existing and prospective customers a superior option for their data backup and storage needs.”

Original post:
Terremark Acquires Storage Provider DS3

Popularity: unranked [?]

The NAP of the Capital Region in Culpeper, Virginia is hosting many of Terremark's cloud computing customers.

The Obama administration’s plan to shift federal IT services to a cloud computing model is beginning to boost revenues for Terremark Worldwide, one of the early leaders in the government cloud services market. The Miami-based company said yesterday that its revenue from cloud computing has surged to an annual rate of $13.2 million, with the majority of that growth coming from the federal government.

Terremark (TMRK) is hosting two of the earliest federal web sites to seek out a cloud hosting model, the USA.gov information portal and Data.gov, an ambitious project to provide the public with better access to government activities through machine-readable data feeds. “Our early success with the federal government has clearly validated our technology leadership which is accelerating our commercial customer’s interest in an adoption of cloud computing,” said Terremark chairman and CEO Manuel Medina.

Medina said the Terremark cloud platform is becoming a gateway to selling additional value-added services to its customers. “Really what gives the premium to our cloud is the services we wrap around it. We don’t expect those (profits) to come down any time soon. To be perfectly honest with you, I’m a lot happier today when we sign a cloud deal than when we sign 1,000 square feet of colo.”

Medina also said he perceives a thaw in the spending freezes in place at many major companies, who said the bookings for the current quarter are among the best in the company’s history. “The IT budgets of many of these large enterprises were virtually frozen over the last 18 to 24 months, but they have now begun undertaking projects like widespread hardware refresh or data center consolidation and expansion,” said Medina. “These conversations represent an ideal opportunity to introduce the benefits of the cloud to a very receptive budget conscious customer.”

Terremark said it has already booked $3 million in additional business from existing customers that are expanding into additional space at Terremark’s campus in Santa Clara, Calif. The company is building 14,000 square feet of expansion space in Santa Clara, which is already fully sold out.

“As we expected, existing customers like Akamai and Shutterfly have already signed contracts to expand in to this new space,” said Medina. “It is opportunities like these with customers that are growing well and have a very long term prospects that we remain very confident in the Santa Clara market.”

Original post:
Surge in Federal Cloud Revenue for Terremark

Popularity: unranked [?]