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Level 3-Wiltel: Will Bandwidth Pricing Rebound?
Researchers at TeleGeography say Tuesday's Level 3-Wiltel deal could prove to be a turning point for bandwidth pricing, which has been trending steadily downward amid a worldwide fiber glut. TeleGeography, a unit of Primerica, wonder if the bandwidth market has hit bottom. An excerpt:
Level 3's acquisition of WilTel represents a major U.S. market consolidation and another step on the path toward price stability for long haul network services. Could this signal the bottom of the bandwidth market? Within the United States, bandwidth prices have been leveling for almost a year on some major routes. For example, average pricing for 155 Mbps leased lines between Los Angeles and San Francisco have only declined 5% in the last year; on the New York-Washington, DC route prices have actually increased.
October 27, 2005
Terremark: NAP Weathers Wilma
Terremark Worldwide, Inc. said today that its NAP of the Americas in Miami, Florida continued to operate throughout Hurricane Wilma without any interruptions to its customers or critical infrastructure. "While historically massive power outages continue to affect the entire region, the critical infrastructure located at the NAP of the Americas remains powered and accessible," Terremark said in a press statement.
"We designed our infrastructure to withstand a Category 5 force hurricane," said Manuel D. Medina, Chairman and CEO of Terremark Worldwide Inc. "As expected, our infrastructure remains fully operational. Companies that continue to select Terremark as their service provider of choice have the peace of mind that they need during these trying times."
Posted by Rich Miller 
October 27, 2005 | Permalink | Newsletter
October 26, 2005
TypePad Crawls During Data Center Changeover
Problems switching between data centers have slowed TypePad, the popular blog hosting service. Owner Six Apart has maxed out Typepad's space at Internap, and is in the process of moving to a new data center. Six Apart hasn't publicly named its new data center, but some Typepad blogs are showing up at Level 42. The transition has not gone smoothly, causing the Typepad service to slow to a crawl amid very public complaints by its blogger customers.
Six Apart co-founder Ben Trott explains:
While a data center move generally tends to add some risk to running a service day-to-day, we could never have anticipated anything like the last couple of weeks. We've seen failures in our storage servers, failures that we had never seen before. We've seen a failure in a piece of networking equipment that had never failed before, and so on, ranging from hardware failures to software failures. After some analysis we believe all these failures are related to the fast growth of our service resulting in heavy load on each box which we could not add to until the completion of the move."As many of you have noticed, during the last couple of weeks TypePad performance has not been what we aspire to and you pay for," added Six Apart President Mena Trott.
Yes, the customers have noticed, and when those customers are bloggers, that means days of loud complaints. "TypePad has been paaaaaaaainfully slow lately," wrote Rich Brooks at Business Blog Consulting. "If you have a TypePad account, posting has been somewhere between difficult and impossible." The performance problems slowed the debut of the Official Dilbert Blog, which was unavailable at times after significant advance publicity. Steve Rubel's popular MicroPersuasion blog was also offline Tuesday. Business blogger Debbie Weil warned that the problems would cause TypePad lovers to defect to competing services. Six Apart's Anil Dash responded in Weil's comments. Interestingly, Weil's blog is among those now hosted at Layer 42.
Posted by Rich Miller October 26, 2005 | Permalink | Newsletter
October 25, 2005
Digital Realty Acquires Two Data Centers in Europe
Technology mega-landlord Digital Realty Trust, Inc. said today that it has acquired two properties in Western Europe - the IBM Technology Park in Mainz, Germany and the Geneva Data Center in Geneva, Switzerland - in separate deals with a combined value of about $105 million. Digital Realty said the deals mark a "significant expansion" of its ambitions in Europe.
The IBM Technology Park includes 11 buildings spanning 1.5 million rentable square feet on 80 acres. IBM leases 590,000 square feet for a mission critical data center, software development operations and support functions. The remaining 910,000 net rentable square feet of the campus is comprised of clean room manufacturing facilities, R&D, warehouse and office space containing approximately 500,000 square feet of available redevelopment space.
Posted by Rich Miller October 25, 2005 | Permalink | Newsletter
October 10, 2005
IXEurope Acquires Ninth Data Center
European hosting and colo provider IXEurope has acquired its ninth data center, and third in Germany. The new facility in Frankfurt-am-Main joins two existing centers in the UK, one in France and three in Switzerland, and provides an immediate capacity of approximately 65,000 square feet of space. The entire property includes about 650,000 square feet.
IXEurope paid 14 million Euros (about $16.7 million) for the new center, including the building, land and contracts for two existing financial services customers and one global internet company.
"This acquisition is a quantum leap forward for IXEurope," said Guy Willner, IXEurope Chief Executive Officer. "Not only is it the largest IXDatacentre to date for the Group but it puts us in a commanding position in the German market, for both datacenters and for our growing business continuity services (BCS) activity."
The facility, located north of Frankfurt, was originally opened in June 2001 following the completion of a $72 million fit-out and is suited for the high-density blade server hosting currently favored among leading web companies and financial enterprise customers.
Posted by Rich Miller October 10, 2005 | Permalink | Newsletter
October 07, 2005
Baton Rouge Data Center Aids in Katrina DR
When Hurricane Katrina took out the web sites of Louisiana local governments and businesses, Baton Rouge-based CMA Technology Solutions stepped in to provide recovery facilities. Company execs Mike Mayer and Chad LeMaire recount the experience at Search Data Center:
The company was able to help Jefferson Parish set up an alternative Web site, jeffparish.net, to provide information and services for residents fortunate enough to have access to the Internet. One of the most important resources the new site provided was an employee locator. After just one day, the town was able to locate over 200 of its workers.Read the full story here.
Posted by Rich Miller October 07, 2005 | Permalink | Newsletter
Equinix Buys DC Data Center for $53 Million
Equinix, Inc. will buy the Ashburn, Virginia technology campus that houses its flagship Washington, D.C. area data center for $53.0 million, the company said today. The 32.6 acre campus in the Dulles corridor includes 461,700 square feet in six buildings, three of which are occupied by Equinix. Two of those centers are built-out, while the third is available for expansion. The space at the campus is 95 percent leased, and Equinix said it will likely sell the properties it doesn't occupy, and try to arrange sale-leaseback deals on its own facilities.
Equinix clearly likes the sale-leaseback model, which it is also pursuing with its newly-acquired Los Angelese-area data center in El Segundo. A sale-leaseback option typically involves a property owner selling their building to a second party, while agreeing to continue to lease space in the building. The transaction generates cash for the former owner (now the tenant), and provides the new owner steady rent from the lease.
Equnix says it expects to close a sale-leaseback deal for its Los Angeles area data center within 30 days, ahead of its previously announced target of year-end. It bought the property for $34.5 million in September of this year and is currently in negotiations with multiple parties to sell the center for $36.0 to $40.0 million.
"With the announced sale of the Ashburn campus, we saw an opportunity to secure our flagship IBX center as well as to acquire contiguous expansion space to position ourselves for further growth in one of our strongest markets," said Peter Van Camp, CEO of Equinix. "Given the tremendous interest we have received in the planned sale-leaseback of our recently acquired Los Angeles area center, we are confident there is a great opportunity to obtain attractive long-term financing for this strategic Washington, D.C. area property as well."
Posted by Rich Miller October 07, 2005 | Permalink | Newsletter
October 05, 2005
DeBlasio is New President for Internap
Internap Network Services this week announced the appointment of James P. DeBlasio as president and chief operating officer. DeBlasio, who has served as a member of Internap's Board of Directors since 2003, will oversee the day-to-day operations of the company's engineering, operations, marketing and sales functions.
DeBlasio most recently served as a financial vice president and chief financial officer of several Lucent Technologies divisions. With more than 23 years of telecom experience, DeBlasio also worked for AT&T Corporation prior to its spin off of Bell Laboratories.
"Internap is primed to take advantage of the industry's changing landscape," said Gregory A. Peters, chief executive officer, Internap. "With the addition of a proven operational leader like Jim, Internap will benefit from his management of the day-to-day business, while I focus on strategic growth opportunities to increase shareholder value."
Posted by Rich Miller October 05, 2005 | Permalink | Newsletter
Digital Realty Pays $39M for Chicago Data Center
Digital Realty Trust, Inc. has acquired Printers' Square, an Internet data center facility in Chicago's South Loop, for approximately $39.0 million, the company said today. The 161,500 square foot property is 85 percent leased, according to DRT, which describes the building as "an important Internet Gateway for the Midwest containing technical facilities for many telecom network service providers and their customers."
The deal helps DRT beef up an already strong Chicago presence. Earlier this year the real estate investment trust (FEIT) bought the Lakeside Technology Center in Chicago for $140 million. The improved space at the 1.09 million square foot Lakeside property is nearly fully-leased, with providers including Qwest, MCI, AT&T, Level (3), T-Systems, Bell Canada, OnFiber Communications, Looking Glass Networks and SBC Communications.
Digital Realty also announced the purchase of a 112,500 square feet data center property in Amsterdam for approximately 14.0 million Euros about $16.7 million US). The three building data center facility is located in the Amstel Business Park West, close to downtown Amsterdam. Originally built in 1988, the buildings were redeveloped in 2000 as a mission critical facility. A single tenant currently leases 65 percent of the space.
"Printers' Square is an important hub for high-speed telecom networks including major Canadian carriers," said Michael Foust, Chief Executive Officer of Digital Realty Trust. "Together with Lakeside Technology Center, this acquisition enhances our market leading position as the dominant provider of mission critical facilities for telecom network providers and corporate data center users in the Midwest.
"In addition, the Amsterdam property provides us with improved data center space available for new tenants during a period of increasing demand for technology-related facilities in Europe," Foust added.
Posted by Rich Miller October 05, 2005 | Permalink | Newsletter
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