Contractors for 2972 Stender included Critical Solutions Group, MATT Construction and Mitsubishi Electric. For more on CoreSite’s data center operations, see our CoreSite Channel. For additional video, check out our DCK video archive and the Data Center Videos channel on YouTube.

Construction activity at the new CoreSite data center in Santa Clara, Calif.

CoreSite Realty has been awarded Gold-level certification under the LEED ( Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) program for energy efficient buildings for the first of its four planned Santa Clara campus data centers at 2901 Coronado. CoreSite (COR) also said the company has been selected by Silicon Valley Power (SVP) as a 2011 Energy Innovator award winner.

The recognitions were announced as CoreSite prepares to open its second Santa Clara site, a 101,000 square foot data center facility at 2972 Stender Way. CoreSite now has the ability to build a third building, a 210,000 square foot data center, at 3001 Coronado Drive.

Santa Clara has been a hotbed of data center activity of late, as Digital Realty Trust, DuPont Fabros, Terremark, QTS and Vantage Data Centers have all had data center space under development.

Silicon Valley Power, the utility in Santa Clara,  awarded CoreSite the Environmental Innovator distinction within the Energy Innovator group based on CoreSite’s comprehensive efforts to support energy efficiency and renewable energy. SVP cited CoreSite’s energy-efficient air temperature design that will save an estimated 6 million kilowatt-hours annually, enough energy to power 6,750 homes for a month.

“CoreSite was selected from a number of excellent candidates for this award, each of whom was evaluated based on a rigorous review and scoring process,” said John C. Roukema, Director of Electric Utility at Silicon Valley Power. “Everyone at Silicon Valley Power would like to commend CoreSite for their efforts in energy-efficiency and renewable energy.”

Over the past year, the average power usage effectiveness (PUE) of CoreSite’s Santa Clara data center campus has been approximately 1.3, resulting in one of the most energy-efficient data center and colocation environments in California.

The server hall of a data center operated by CoreSite, which is expanding its data center space in northern Virginia.

Data center builders continue to bring new capacity online in the active northern Virginia market. Last week both CoreSite Realty and Latisys announced projects to expand their data center operations in Reston and Ashburn, respectively. The expansions are among a number of new projects will provide a welcome supply of data center space in a  market where demand continues to exceed supply.

In its fourth quarter earnings, CoreSite (COR) said that it has commenced construction on 52,286 square feet of  data center space at its 12100 Sunrise Valley Drive facility in Reston. The company said it will invest an estimated $30.5 million in the expansion, and expects to complete the space in phases during the second and third quarters of 2011.

The expansion space has an anchor tenant, managed hosting provider ServInt, which said last week that it has leased half a megawatt of capacity in the  expansion space.  “This significant expansion of our data center resources will help us ensure ample capacity for ongoing and future growth,” said ServInt CTO Matthew Loschert. “We selected CoreSite’s Reston facility for our expansion because it provides best-of-breed connectivity, energy efficiency, power redundancy and environmental sustainability. We consider it to be the best-positioned data center in Northern Virginia.”

Meanwhile, Latisys has announced a significant expansion to its Ashburn, Virginia data center campus that includes 14 megawatts of additional power and 26,000 square feet of new, available raised floor space. Latisys, which provides managed hosting and colocation services, says it is new space can scale to an average of 220 watts per square foot and also tie customer infrastructure seamlessly into the company’s disaster recovery solutions.

“We continue to see customers express the need to ensure built-in expansion capacity to meet their own internal growth while also retaining the flexibility to keep pace with the evolution of compute, storage and network technologies” said David Haskell, Washington, D.C. Regional Sales Director, Latisys. “By implementing high density power and cooling capacity, and delivering a flexible data center-as-a-service offering to enable larger private and public sector entities to meet evolving IT requirements, customers can eliminate scalability and reliability issues.”

The development rights will enable CoreSite to construct three new buildings in addition to CoreSite’s existing, fully-leased 50,000 square-foot data center at 2901 Coronado Drive. The entitlements also allow for construction of a proposed electrical substation on the data center campus.

LEED Gold Building Planned
CoreSite is currently building a 101,000 square foot data center facility at 2972 Stender Way, and expects to complete the building in the third quarter of 2011. CoreSite now has the ability to build a third building, a 210,000 square foot data center, at 3001 Coronado Drive.

Santa Clara has been a hotbed of data center activity of late, as Digital Realty Trust, DuPont Fabros, Terremark, QTS and Vantage Data Centers have all had data center space under development.

The CoreSite Santa Clara project was announced in May 2008 as  a three-building project with a total price tag of $350 million. Tne city approvals allow the company to pursue its full build-out at the site.

“The entitlement by the City of Santa Clara solidifies the development plan CoreSite presented when we went public,” said Thomas Ray, President and Chief Executive Officer of CoreSite. “We’re pleased to be on schedule with the project and to deploy the proceeds from our initial public offering as we outlined to the market.”

The 2972 Stender data center is being built to LEED Gold standards, featuring energy-efficient initiatives such as 97percent-efficient UPS systems, air-side economization, and variable frequency driven (VFD) cooling units.

“Our Santa Clara data center campus demonstrates CoreSite’s commitment to energy-efficient data center design,” said  Billie Haggard, CoreSite SVP of Data Centers. “We’d like to thank the City of Santa Clara for sharing our vision of providing important infrastructure supporting economic growth in the region in a responsible, energy-efficient manner. The City’s staff worked closely with our development team to approve our project plans while ensuring that the development is completed consistently with the City’s environmental standards.”

The planned buildings join CoreSite’s three existing data centers in Silicon Valley, where CoreSite currently owns approximately 365,000 square feet of operating space. Full build out of the Santa Clara campus would bring CoreSite’s Bay Area portfolio to more than 860,000 square feet supporting regional technology needs.

CoreSite Realty (COR) provides access to over 200 network service providers via 11 data centers in seven key U.S. economic centers.

The server hall of a data center operated by CoreSite.

As Carrier Ethernet emerges as a key enabler of enterprise network and cloud services, the presence of a Carrier Ethernet Exchange becomes a key differentiator for data centers. Today CoreSite Realty announced a partnership with CENX, which will offer its Carrier Ethernet Exchange  services in each of CoreSite’s 11 data centers.

For CoreSite (COR), the partnership provides a Carrier Ethernet strategy at a time when rivals Equinix and Telx are deploying Ethernet Exchanges in a growing number of their facilities. For CENX, a pioneer in the Carrier Ethernet space, the agreement extends its services into new geographic markets in the San Francisco Bay Area, Boston, Northern Virginia and Washington, D.C. -  as well as additional data centers in Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, and New York.

Carrier Ethernet as Key Cloud Enabler
Carrier Ethernet is an enhanced standard created to extend data-centric Ethernet networks to exchange data with telecom networks initially designed to carry voice traffic. As such, it’s an important enabler of the convergence between global communications networks – including dedicated connections to support private clouds and interoperability between cloud platforms.

Carrier Ethernet exchanges – which effectively translate between different carrier Ethernet offerings – are seen as an important next phase, making it far easier for networks to connect across geographies.

“This is the next generation of services,” said Chuck Price, the Senior Vice President of Information Technology for CoreSite Realty. “Some of our competitors are building their own (Ethernet exchanges), but we  just thought it best to focus on our core competencies and form a strategic alliance with someone who has best-of-breed technology.”

CENX will own and operate its Carrier Ethernet Exchange services, with CoreSite’s data centers providing national access points. CNEX co-founder and President Nan Chen was the founding president of the Metro Ethernet Forum, which was formed in 2001 to head the development of the Carrier Ethernet standard. He then teamed with Ron Gavillet, a co-founder of Neutral Tandem, to create CENX to implement Carrier Ethernet in exchanges. The company launched the first exchange in late 2009.

Competitors Emerge Quickly
Interconnection and colocation specialists Equinix (April 2010) and Telx (June 2010) soon followed with their own Ethernet Exchange offerings. “For them, this is a way to drive sales of space and power,” said Chen. “This is not their core competence. We think it’s a welcome sign of the acceptance of this offering.”

Chen said the agreement with CoreSite gives CENX a larger presence at key connectivity hubs, especially One Wilshire in Los Angeles. “At data centers like One Wilshire, it provides our customers easy access to our exchange, because many of them colocate there already,” said Chen.

Price said having CENX in CoreSite data centers provides an opportunity for its carrier customers. CoreSite said CENX Exchange members can benefit from extended network reach, route optimization and diversification, and cost savings. At full deployment, CENX Carrier Ethernet Exchange services are expected to be available to all of CoreSite’s 600+ data center customers.

“The agreement with CENX enables our data center customers to benefit immediately from Carrier Ethernet services with the leading provider, augmenting the range of interconnection and peering currently available in our data centers,” said Thomas M. Ray, president and CEO of CoreSite. “We believe that the CENX platform will create additional value to our customers, who currently rely upon CoreSite to facilitate or provide over 9,000 interconnections making Internet and other forms of communication increasingly efficient, responsive and reliable.”

“We are pleased to have Jeff join our leadership team,” said Tom Ray, Chief Executive Officer of CoreSite (COR). “Jeff brings deep experience in REITs, public accounting, public company financial reporting and planning, and public capital markets activities. He joins us at an exciting time, and we look forward to his proven capabilities being applied to CoreSite’s business and enhancing the execution of the Company’s growth plan.”

“We’d like to thank Deedee Beckman for her five years of dedication and excellent work in leading our finance and accounting organization and for setting our course to operate in the public domain,” said Ray.

CoreSite CEO Thomas Ray (right) is interviewed by CNBC's Erin Burnett on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange after ringing the opening bell to make Thursday's IPO.

Shares of CoreSite Realty Corp. opened begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange today as the company completed its initial public offering. The CoreSite executive team rang the opening bell at the NYSE at 9:30 a.m. to mark its IPO under the symbol COR. The company’s stock began trading at at $16, at the midpoint of the expected $15 to $17 range, meaning the offering will raise about $270 million. COR closed its first day of trading at $16.01 per share, up 1 cent on the day.

CoreSite offers finished “wholesale” data center space, which has been in high demand as end users seek turn-key space that can be deployed quickly. The Denver-based company will become the third data center REIT, following in the footsteps of Digital Realty Trust (DLK) and DuPont Fabros Technology (DFT).

CoreSite plans to use the proceeds of the IPO to repay debt and develop additional data center space, according to its SEC filing. The company operates 11 data centers in major markets around the U.S., comprising a total of 2 million square feet of rentable space. CoreSite also has the capability to add another 1 millions quare feet through the redevelopment of vacant space in existing buildings (481,000 SF) and building 496,250 square feet of new data center construction on land it owns.

CoreSite is affiliated with the huge private equity firm The Carlyle Group. CoreSite Realty will function as the operating unit of CoreSite LP, which will own the company’s 11 data center properties.

CoreSite will become the third data center REIT, following in the footsteps of Digital Realty Trust (DLK) and DuPont Fabros Technology (DFT). All three offer finished “wholesale” data center space, which has been in high demand as end users seek turn-key space that can be deployed quickly.

CoreSite says it will use the proceeds of the IPO to repay debt and develop additional data center space, according to its SEC filing. The company operates 11 data centers in major markets around the U.S., comprising a total of 2 million square feet of rentable space. CoreSite also has the capability to add another 1 millions quare feet through the redevelopment of vacant space in existing buildings (481,000 SF) and building 496,250 square feet of new data center construction on land it owns.

CoreSite LP is affiliated with the huge private equity firm The Carlyle Group. CoreSite Realty will be formed through a series of restructuring transactions prior to the IPO between CoreSite LP and Carlyle, which will receive stock in exchange for the data center properties they are contributing. The CoreSite Realty REIT will then function as the operating unit of CoreSite LP, which will own the company’s 11 data center properties.

Is there also value in accessing government data at ultra-fast speeds, allowing traders to make decisions more quickly than less-connected rivals? Can monthly economic reports from the government create low-latency ecosystems as well?

CoreSite is advancing this concept in positoning its data center at 1275 K Street in Washington, D.C. as a destination for low-latency trading firms. Today CoreSite announced that economic news services Need to Know News and RapiData have deployed equipment at 1275 K Street, which is located just one mile from the federal departments of Labor, Commerce and Treasury, all of which issue potentially market-moving economic reports.

Need to Know News and RapiData have reporters at each of these government agencies, who load data into custom applications for instantaneous delivery the moment the reports are released. The data then travels to data centers in northern Virginia, New Jersey and Chicago.

CoreSite says the closer proximity of its Washington, D.C. data center can offer “more than a millisecond advantage over suburbs such as Ashburn, Virginia.”

“The addition of Need to Know News and Rapidata, combined with the proximity to fiber routes and Government agencies makes our Washington, DC colocation facility an ideal location for trading firms, investment banks, and other economic news providers,” said David Dunn, CoreSite’s SVP of Strategy and Marketing.

CoreSite’s Washington, DC data center at 1275 K Street has access to more than 40 carriers and service providers, allowing them to negotiate and choose the best provider for the most optimal routes and services.

The server hall of a data center operated by CoreSite, which is filing for a $230 million IPO.

Data center operator CoreSite has filed for an initial public offering as a real estate investment trust (REIT), and hopes to raise $230 million, the company said in an SEC filing. The IPO filing is the third this year for data center operators, who are seeking to leverage improved capital markets and investor interest in the sector.

CoreSite Realty Corporation also plans to arrange a $100 million credit facility and issue $175 million in senior notes when it completes the offering, providing the company witha  total of $505 million when it begins life as a public company. CoreSite plans to trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol COR.

Will Become Third Data Center REIT
CoreSite will become the third data center REIT, following in the footsteps of Digital Realty Trust (DLK) and DuPont Fabros Technology (DFT). All three offer finished “wholesale” data center space, which has been in high demand as end users seek turn-key space that can be deployed quickly.

CoreSite says it will use the proceeds of the IPO to repay debt and develop additional data center space, according to its SEC filing. The company operates 10 data centers in major markets around the U.S., comprising a total of 2 million square feet of rentable space. CoreSite also has the capability to add another 1 millions quare feet through the redevelopment of vacant space in existing buildings (481,000 SF) and building 496,250 square feet of new data center construction on land it owns.

Will Restructure Relationship With Carlyle
CoreSite LP is affiliated with the huge private equity firm The Carlyle Group. CoreSite Realty will be formed through a series of restructuring transactions prior to the IPO between CoreSite LP and Carlyle, which will receive stock in exchange for the data center properties they are contributing. The CoreSite Realty REIT will then function as the operating unit of CoreSite LP, which will own the company’s 10 data center properties.