Strong Activity in Boston Data Center Market

Recent reports on the Boston area data center market feature one large requirement for a new facility, and an active colocation market in which several providers say they’re seeing strong demand.

TJX Cos. Inc. is seeking a location to build a 150,000 square foot data center, according to real estate sources in the Boston market. TJX has its headquarters in Framingham, Mass. and is hoping to find a site that can accommodate a short-term data center project as well as the company’s long-term plans to add up to 600,000 square feet of office space.

Colocation demand in the Boston market is keeping data center providers busy, according to a profile in Mass High Tech that discusses recent activity at CRG West, Internap Network Services (INAP) and the Markley Group, which owns the One Summer Street carrier hotel. The story notes Internap’s recent expansion at CRG’s 70 Innerbelt project, as well as the role of increasing power loads in customer decisions to seek third-party data center space.

[2N+1] Readies New Boston Data Center

Two veterans of the Boston-area data center community are building a new facility. Vincent Bono and Will Locandro have formed [2N+1] (yes, the brackets are part of the company name) to build a new 45,000 square foot data center in a fiber-rich neighborhood in Somerville, Mass., according to Xconomy. The new colocation center is across the street from a local utility NSTAR, which is providing 12 megawatts of power to support power density of 250 watts per square foot.

[2N+1] is described as “something of a boutique operation” targeting customers needing between 250 and 5,000 square feet of colocation space. “Those are the customers that are historically the least amount of trouble to work with,” said Bono, who worked as a data center designer for HarvardNet and Boston Datacenters.. “Very large companies want you to offer all of these ancillary managed services that we don’t want to get into. And very small customers want you to essentially be their IT team, and we don’t want to do that, either.” The new data center is scheduled to open for business next month.

Springfield Wins $78M Mass. Data Center

The Massachusetts House of Representatives has approved $78 million for a state data center in Springfield, Mass. after a bitter debate over the location of the facility. The House voted 150-0 Thursday night to approve a $3 billion bond bill that earmarks money for the data center. Legislators have been feuding for months over the location of the data center, arguing over competing locations in Springfield. The state Senate must also approve the spending.

The House debate involved some political infighting. Here’s a summary from MassLive.com:

During debate on the legislation, members voted 113-36 to defeat an effort by two Springfield Democrats to strip language from the bill inserted by Rep. Thomas M. Petrolati, D-Ludlow, that orders the state to build the data center at a disputed site at Springfield Technical Community College. Members voted to uphold Petrolati’s selection of the technology park, but provide oversight from the state Inspector General. In a rare challenge to Petrolati, one of the most powerful House members, Reps. Sean F. Curran and Angelo J. Puppolo Jr. fought for an amendment that sought to allow Gov. Deval L. Patrick to choose a site in Springfield.

The Springfield Technical Community College’s technology park was rejected as a site for the data center in a 2006 report by the administration of former Gov. W. Mitt Romney because of security and space problems. The Romney administration wanted to build the data center at a former high school in Springfield. The new facility would provide backup for a main technology center in Chelsea and would create about 50 jobs.

Massachusetts Project Plans Wind Turbines

Real estate developers in Fall River, Massachusetts want to convert a vacant mill into a data center, and plan to use wind turbines to generate some of the 20 megawatts of power needed to support the project. Roland Patenaude and Karen Charette have leased the former Globe Manufacturing mill in hopes of creating a 120,000 foot data center similar to carrier hotel properties in Boston. Fall River is in southern Massachusetts near the Rhode Island border, about 25 miles of Providence.

Patenaude and Charette will discuss the proposal for their Granite Block Global Data Center with the local zoning board this week, according to local media, who apparently are not sure what to make of a facility that would require enough electricity to power 15,000 local homes. The wind mills for the turbines could reach 300 feet in height, as could a planned telecommunications tower. All three structures would require a variance.

Red Sox Move to Colo at One Summer Street

Fenway Park may be a great place to watch a baseball game, but it’s not the best place for a data center. Two weeks ago the Boston Red Sox moved their IT equipment from cramped administrative offices at Fenway to custom data center space at 1 Summer Street, one of Boston’s most connected carrier hotels.

“The issue for us was that we had outgrown our data center,” said Randy George, senior systems and network analyst for the Red Sox. “We had equipment overflowing from the data center into our employees’ offices, and we had scaled past the power limitations as well. It was definitely a facilities issue that drove us to a colocated data center.”

The Red Sox installed Ekinops optical transmission equipment to connect Fenway and 1 Summer Street , enabling a Fibre Channel and storage area network solution.

ColoSpace Opens Sixth Data Center

IT infrastructure provider ColoSpace has opened its sixth data center, the company said today, continuing its focus on New England. The new 16,000 square foot data center and Network Operations Center (NOC) is located on Winter Street in Waltham, Massachusetts in the Route 128 technology corridor. The facility was built in 2001 by a national network provider, Giant Loops, and has been upgraded for use by ColoSpace.

Co-founder and COO Aaron Sawchuk, said the new facility will serve the immediate needs of local firms constrained by growth in their company data centers. “Many firms in the area are faced with serious shortages of power to handle the new blade server environments, and as summer approaches they will feel the impact of their undersized cooling systems,” said Sawchuk.

AT&T to Expand Data Centers in Boston, Dallas

AT&T (T) will expand its data center network, with plans to add 180,000 square feet of hosting space as part of a broader $1 billion expansion of its network. The additional space will be built out in AT&T’s 38 existing data centers around the world, with a focus on four markets: Boston, Dallas, Singapore and Amsterdam. The company’s 2008 expansion budget is 33 percent larger than last year’s, and is being driven by “explosive surge in data, voice and video traffic.”

The expansion, which will give AT&T nearly 2.3 million square feet of data center space, comes just six months after the company announced new data centers in Toronto and Piscataway, New Jersey. In late 2006 AT&T added data centers in Chicago and Shanghai, China.

Carbonite Expands Boston Data Center

Online backup service Carbonite Inc. has signed a lease to triple the floor space of its Boston data center at One Summer Street, the carrier hotel operated by the Markley Group. The expanded space will allow Carbonite to continue its current customer growth rate through the end of 2008, when it expects to have additional data centers in operation.

“Even though disks and other equipment are getting smaller and data densities are increasing rapidly, we still need a lot more space to handle our rapidly growing customer base,” said Carbonite CEO David Friend. “So we are expanding the size of our Boston data center by a factor of three. We’ve been very happy with our relationship with the Markley Group. Later this year we’ll be opening data centers in other cities, but meanwhile we now have enough space in our Boston data center to carry us through 2008.”

Massachusetts Plans for $78M Data Center

Massachusetts wants to build a new data center, but can’t decide on a location. More than $78 million in funding for a new state data center has been included in Gov. Deval L. Patrick’s proposal for $2.5 billion in bonds for capital projects. The funding request has sparked jockeying among local legislators, who have differing ideas about the best site for the new data center.

While the decision about a Massachusetts state data center is in its early going - state legislators must still approve the funding - a similar proposal in New York State became a contentious poitical football.

Patrick didn’t specify a community to host the proposed data center, saying only that it should be in Western Massachusetts. State Rep. Thomas Petrolati wants to amend the bill to specify that the data center be located at at Springfield Technical Community College. U.S. Rep. Richard E. Neal is leading a group of municipal, business and civic leaders who favor the old Technical High School on Elliot Street in Springfield.

Hosted Solutions Upgrades Boston Sites

Hosted Solutions says it has invested $1 million in infrastructure upgrades for a Charlestown, Mass. facility it bought with its acquisition of Boston Datacenters last October. Upgrades include a redesign of the interior layout to promote better cooling, an improved data backup system, and additional UPS power support.

“The Charlestown facility has been a staple of the Boston Internet community for nearly seven years, and we are eager to keep our facility on the leading edge of technology and innovation,” said Gary McAuliffe, Vice President and General Manager of the Boston facility.

Hosted Solutions said it intends to spend another $1.5 million on the facility in upgrades over the next 12 months. Additional projects include a new power infrastructure suite, a redesigned network operations center, an upgraded security system, and the addition of a Storage Area Network (SAN).