MIT Team Weighs $100M Green Data Center

A proposed data center project in western Massachusetts has brought together MIT, The University of Massachusetts, Cisco Systems and EMC Corp., who plan to work jointly on developing a $100 million facility showcasing “green” technologies.

News of the data center initiative in Holyoke, Mass., which is scheduled to be announced Thursday, comes just three weeks after the unveiling of a project in Syracuse, N.Y. featuring similar cooperation between the private sector and academia. The Holyoke project will be a high-performance computing resource for academic and research institutions in Massachusetts, according to the Boston Globe.   

The Holyoke location would allow the data center to use hydroelectric power from the Connecticut River, and can access fiber routes along the nearby Mass Pike. The four partners would all participate in the funding, and may recruit additional participants as well.   

Hosted Solutions Upgrades Boston Facility

Hosted Solutions has completed more than $6 million in upgrades to its Boston data center, with improvements in power, cooling, back-up power and security. With the upgrades, Hosted Solutions has begun offering a suite of managed services including application management, managed replication, disaster recovery, load balancing and advanced monitoring.

“We have seen tremendous momentum with our customer growth throughout New England,” said Mike Lee, Regional Manager for Hosted Solutions. “Given current market conditions, companies today require a trusted partner who can provide them with services across all areas of IT, rather than simply providing data center space or point solutions. Increasingly, companies recognize both the immediate and ongoing value of having a trusted partner provide them with the full range of outsourced technology services.

Massachusetts Picks Site for $76M Facility

The state of Massachusetts will spend $76 million to transform a former high school in Springfield into a major new data center, which will supplement the state’s primary facility in Chelsea. The project has been in the works for several years while state legislators have been wrangling over the best location for the new investment. The former Springfield Technical High School was selected over the Springfield Technical Community College.

The site location decision was based on a “thorough, impartial technical analysis” by the state Division of Capital Asset Management (DCAM), the Information Technology Division (ITD) and an unnamed outside consultant. The review found that the Tech High site would save the state millions of dollars in procurement and construction costs.

“The second data center in Springfield will allow us to better manage and protect the systems that provide essential services to our citizens,” said Anne Margulies, the state’s Chief Information Officer. “The Second Data Center is also a key part of our strategy to manage our technology in a more cost effective manner and to become a national model for green and environmental friendly data centers.”

Rhode Island Seeking Site for Data Center

The state of Rhode Island is seeking a 50,000 to 70,000 square foot building to serve as the new state data center, replacing an aging facility housed in a former used car lot. The state Department of Administration has placed newspaper ads seeking property owners in the Providence area interested in selling their building.   

The Providence Journal notes that the data center relocation effort is being launched as Rhode Island faces a huge budget deficit. Amy Kempe, a spokesperson for Gov. Donald Carcieri, said the search is driven by the condition of the existing state data center. “The current center is a former used-car-lot building that is in poor shape and has more value to the surrounding businesses in the area,” Kempe told the Journal. “By relocating the IT department, the building and land can be sold at the appropriate time.”

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.