Telx selected by SoftLayer as partner. Colocation provider Telx announced that they have been selected as a connectivity partner by SoftLayer.  SoftLayer has a presence in Atlanta and New York City Telx facilities.  Telx interconnection services provide the security, reduced latency and minimal number of hops on the network for SoftLayer. “Today, our customers can directly tap into our infrastructure on a guaranteed, high-speed connection without going over the public Internet,” said George Karidis, chief strategy officer at SoftLayer. “The Telx solution provides high redundancy, security, and limitless scalability,”

Next-Generation 100G field trial. Verizon (VZ), Juniper Networks (JNPR), NEC Corporation of America, and Finisar Corp. (FNSR) announced the successful completion of the first real traffic 100 gigabits per second (100G) optical fiber transmission field trial applying standards-based optics end-to-end and using the latest in 100G native router interfaces.  The field trial took place in the north Dallas area, over a 1,520 kilometer optically amplified section of the Verizon network.  Stefan Dyckerhoff, executive vice president and general manager, infrastructure products group at Juniper noted that “trends such as cloud computing, data center consolidation and virtualization are making the need for 100G more acute and urgent than ever before.”  The demonstration included live video traffic, through a 100G interface on the Juniper T1600 Core Router to the NEC SpectraWave DWDM system.  Between the router and the DWDM system was an IEEE standard-compliant 100GBASE-LR4 client interface, using 100G CFP optical transceiver modules from Finisar Corp.

Force10 selected by Budapest Internet Exchange. Force 10 Networks announced that the Budapest Internet Exchange (BIX) has selected the E-Series switch/routers to provide highly reliable performance and unmatched scalability for its growing customer base of Internet Service Providers and telcos in Hungary and Eastern Europe. “As the largest Internet Exchange in Eastern Europe, we faced a 66 percent increase of Internet traffic per year in the recent years,” says Zoltan Kalmar, president of the BIX Committee. “The Force10 E-Series provided us with the non-blocking line-rate fabric we required in order to offer our customers highly reliable and predictable performance, while delivering the high 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10 GbE) density that ensures we have the right network backbone in place to handle our ever-growing traffic needs in the future.”  BIX leveraged the E1200 because of total throughput and scalability of up to 1,260 GbE and 224 10 GbE ports per chassis with access control lists on all ports.

GlobeNet and Alcatel-Lucent complete submarine cable system. Alcatel Lucent (ALU) and GlobeNet announced the completion of the upgrade of the 22,000 kilometer submarine cable system linking the U.S. with Latin America.  This enables GlobeNet to deliver more than 100 Gigabits per second of capacity.  In addition to upgrading the submarine sections and landing points in North and South America, the submarine network also integrates with the terrestrial optical infrastructure of GlobeNet’s parent company, Oi (TNE). “This network upgrade provides GlobeNet with the extra capacity needed to support advanced services, while keeping its network easy to manage,” stated Philippe Dumont, General Manager of Alcatel-Lucent’s submarine network activity.

SoftLayer will move its headquarters and expanded data center operations to this Digital Realty Trust building in the Dallas market.

Fast-growing IT infrastructure provider SoftLayer Technologies has leased space for a new headquarters and data center in a Digital Realty Trust (DLR) facility in Dallas, the company confirmed today.

Softlayer will relocate its headquarters from Plano to 60,000 square feet of space in the Dallas property, which is housed in three contiguous buildings. About 30,000 square feet will be converted to data center space to house the growing infrastructure at SoftLayer, which will gradually develop the space in 5,000 square foot pods. The facility will also house SoftLayer’s headquarters and global network operations center (NOC). The expansion was first reported in the Dallas BizJournal. 

SoftLayer operates data centers at the Dallas Infomart carrier hotel, and in facilities in Seattle and northern Virginia.

“This will give us office space for the next two-plus years and data center space in Dallas for the next three-plus years,” wrote SoftLayer chief strategy officer George Karidis. “Our Plano office is pretty much full and does not offer us nearly the growth opportunity that this new building does. We really wanted to have our HQ colocated with a data center, and that’s what we have.”

In September SoftLayer raised $20 million in senior notes from a private investment group, providing capital to fund the continued growth of the company. SoftLayer has 5,700 customers running 24,000 servers, and expected to report more than $80 million in revenue for 2009.

A look at the three 1.5 MW generators supporting the new CoreXchange data center in Dallas.

Colocation and network services provider CoreXchange has opened a new data center in the Dallas area, moving into 20,000 square feet of space at 8600 Harry Hines Boulevard. The company, which already operates a data center at The Infomart, will use the additional room to accommodate growing demand for managed colocation services.

The CoreXchange Connection is located eight miles from downtown Dallas and two miles from Love Field Airport. Phase I build out of the new facility consists of an initial 20,000 square feet, with planned expansion to 100,000 square feet.

CoreXchange operates a “network access exchange” and has developed a bandwidth Pricing Configurator tool that allows customers to create a network access profile that best meets their requirements from the CoreXchange multi-homed mesh of BGP-routed Tier-1 backbone carriers and cross-connects to all major carriers, including direct connect to the Dallas Equinix facility.

The facility is supported by three 1.5 megawatt Cummins generators, four 500-ton Trane chillers, twenty 30-ton Liebert air handling units, and a thermal storage system featuring 46 ice storage tanks.
 
“Offering the highest performing network and service customization, we’ll continue to deliver the best customer solution for the best possible price,” said Julia Morgan, sales executive for CoreXchange. “And with more data center capacity and a growing list of network backbone partners, we’ll have even greater opportunity to create satisfied customers.”

• Midwest ISO seeks new home for backup data site. Major power consortium Midwest ISO is looking for a new home for their $35 million backup data site after the Boone County (Indiana) Commissioners voted down their rezoning request for land.  Due to a stipulation from the Department of Homeland Security, Midwest ISO was looking to build its 17-acre, $35 million data center in a rural area, away from major highways, railways and airports.  This is the second time they have been turned down in Boone county. Ten years ago they were turned down when they wanted to build a headquarters near Zionsville.  Midwest ISO recently announced expansion of their headquarters in Carmel, Indiana; investing around $110 million to upgrade computer equipment and adding 70 jobs over the next five years.
• Growth in Michigan for Online Tech.  CEO of Ann Arbor-based Online Technologies Yan Ness credits the cold Michigan temperatures for the continued growth of his business.  Online Tech has three data centers -  a 30,500 square foot facility in Genesee County, 10,500 square feet south of Ann Arbor in Avis Park and the newest facility, 5,000 square feet in down town Ann Arbor. Recently Online Tech won an Ann Arbor SPARK’s Fast Track award for a fourth consecutive year.  The award honors companies that maintain average annual revenue growth of 20% for three consecutive years.
• Texas data center demand outpacing supply. Sheila Bellinger, VP and Southwest director of the Grub & Ellis National Data Center Group spoke at Datacenter Dynamics Dallas Thursday on the topic of supply and demand for data center space in the Dallas-ForthWorth area.  Bellinger noted that about 1.5 million square feet of data center space was absorbed by the Dallas-FortWorth market over the past three years.  Although power costs in the area are expensive, other factors such as fiber-optic infrastructure, favorable regulatory environment and low construction costs are what drives demand.  Bellinger said that Texas is consuming more power than any other state in the U.S.

I am a little bit partial to this last story: Waterloo, Fastest (Internet) Town in the Midwest.  Stacey Higginbotham from GigaOm reports on a local newspaper story about Waterloo Iowa having faster broadband than even the most wired cities.  Mediacom selected Waterloo to (soon) have 105 Mbps cable Internet service on the downlink thanks to the town’s willingness to get involved in bringing better broadband to its residents.

“This new investment accelerates our plans for expansion with the addition of new data centers in new markets,” said Lance Smith, CEO of Horizon. “We have been working on opportunities in both Northern Virginia and California, in addition to expansion in our Dallas home market. This investment will allow us to move quickly on those opportunities to provide much needed top tier data center services to enterprise, Web 2.0 businesses and government entities in these regions.”

Horizon currently operates two data centers in Digital Realty Trust (DLR) buildings in Carrollton, Texas and is working with Dallas-based broker GVA Cawley to evaluate new sites. Horizon says it will make an announcement about is Virginia expansion by the close of 2009. The company web site says Horizon’s Dallas Three data center will be at Digital Realty’s new data center campus in Richardson, Texas.

Ballast Point Ventures (BPV), a growth equity firm based in St. Petersburg, Fla. with $200 million under management,received a minority equity stake and a seat on the Horizon board for BPV partner Paul Johan.

“Horizon has delivered outstanding service to its customers and has brought to the marketplace a new approach that provides access to top tier data center space in a format that is scalable and agile,” said Johan. “The Horizon approach has been well received by both data center industry analysts and customers, as is evident in their rapid growth, which we found particularly impressive in a very difficult economic environment. We believe the company is well positioned to continue their growth, and we’re excited to partner with such a high quality management team.”

Horizon Data Center Solutions was founded in 2007 by co-founders Lance A. Smith and Chuck Smith, long-time data center industry executives, with investment from the Eric Chancellor Family LTC Partnership (ECFLP), which will continue its relationship with Horizon in an equity position.

SoftLayer, which offers dedicated servers and a range of cloud computing solutions, now has more than 5,700 customers in more than 110 countries. The Plano, Texas company has more than 21,000 servers running in its data centers. Last month SoftLayer closed on $20 million in senior notes from a private investment group, which will be used to fund the continued growth of the company

“We’re extremely proud that our record of success has continued. Our momentum just keeps building,” said Mike Jones, the CFO of SoftLayer. “It’s not a coincidence that, in this economic climate, more customers are turning to us for services designed to help them optimize their operations and focus on their own business objectives. SoftLayer’s results to date can be attributed to the use of cutting-edge technology deployments that did not exist 3-5 years ago.”

In its release, SoftLayer said it is recording EBITDA margins of more than 40 percent, and recently won the TechTitans award as the fastest growing company in Dallas for second consecutive year.

SoftLayer has raised over $100 million in financing to date and has delivered increasing month-over-month profitability. The company is based in Plano, Texas, and operates data centers at the Dallas Informart carrier hotel, and in Internap facilities in Seattle and northern Virginia.

The Collins Technology Center in Richardson, Texas. Digital Realty Trust is redeveloping the former Alcatel campus as a data center park (Photo: Digital Realty Trust).

Digital Realty Trust (DLR) has taken the lead in a long-running effort to redevelop a campus in the Richardson, Texas as a data center park that could eventually feature 800,000 square feet of mission-critical space. Digital Realty has acquired 60 percent of the former Collins Technology Park through a joint venture with previous property owner Skyrise Properties, the companies said today.

“This acquisition positions Digital Realty Trust as the largest wholesale datacenter provider in the Dallas/Fort Worth market,” said Brent Behrman, Vice President of Global Sales for Digital Realty Trust. “With its availability of power, fiber and our team of datacenter experts, the Richardson campus will be the premier datacenter facility in the Southwest and the epicenter of the Dallas Technology community.”

Plenty of Power
The 70-acre property includes seven buildings ranging from 15,000 to 250,000 square feet, with a total of 797,000 square feet. An on-site 40 megawatt substation can be expanded to 125 megawatts, with fiber connectivity from multiple providers. Digital Realty plans on having data center space ready at the site in early 2010.

“We’ve been looking at this property for a long time,” said Chris Crosby, senior vice president for business development at Digital Realty Trust. “Dallas has been a great market for us.”

Crosby said the volume of space and mix of existing properties gives Digital the opportunity to offer customers anything from turn-key space to powered shell to custom scenarios. “This is really the first time we can deliver any of our products from the same campus,” said Crosby. “We have quite a bit of interest in Turn-Key Datacenters.”

First Phase Features Turn-Key Space
The first phase of Digitial Realty’s development plan will feature several pods of turnkey space, each offering 1.125 megawatts of critical load. The Turn-key Datacenter program offers customers finished ”plug and play” raised-floor data center space, which shifts the data center development costs from the tenant to the landlord, and allows for much quicker deployment than if the customer built a new facility on its own.

The property in the heart of Richardson’s “Telecom Corridor” once housed a major Alcatel facility. Skyrise Properties bought the project in 2006 and reposiitoned it as a data center campus. 

“This transaction is a great example of our ability to maintain relationships with owners and sellers of strategic data center properties in top markets,” said Chris Kenney, Vice President of Acquisitions for Digital Realty Trust. “We have worked with our new partner off and on over the last 18 months, which ultimately resulted in the joint venture transaction we are pleased to announce today.”

Horizon said today that it has reached capacity in its first data center, a 25,000 square foot facility in a Digital Realty Trust (DLR) building at 4025 Midway in Carollton. It also operates 12,500 square feet of space in a second Digital Realty property in Carrollton at 2440 Marsh Lane.

Targeting the SMB Market
CEO Lance Smith said Horizon has found a strong niche targeting small- to medium-sized projects, including IT infrastructure hosting for SMBs as well as modest projects for larger corporations. The company leases wholesale data center space, acquires managed service providers (it bought Mareechi in April) and uses its expertise to operate the facility and package the services for its clients.

“In between colo and the large IT outsourcers, we find that the market genuinely needs a flexible approach for small to mid-sized customers,” said Smith. “The major data center providers in this country focus solely on serving the needs of billion dollar businesses. However, businesses of all sizes require data security and business continuity strategies that protect them from outages or data loss that can shut everything down. Our vision is to fill this gap with an advanced offering at a fair price.”     

Shopping for Wholesale Space
Horison’s expanding government practice and strong growth has accelerated their expansion plans by several months. The company is discussing wholesale data center space opportunities with the two data center REITs, Digital Realty and DuPont Fabros Technology (DFT), as well as Quality Technology Services, Smith said.

Horizon expects annual revenues for 2009 to top $20 million, and says it continues to add customers in its Dallas Two data center, where it has ”several thousand” square feet of colocation space is under contract. New customers include a national home builder, an 800-physician medical practice management company, a multi-state higher education institution and a Department of Defense infrastructure security installation.

An aerial view of 3000 Skyline, the CAPSTAR/Cambay project in Mesquite, Texas.

Nine miles east of Dallas, a large former industrial property is being redeveloped as a data center campus. It’s one of many properties around the U.S. that are being marketed for data center use, but haven’t yet found tenants.

But the 3000 Skyline site in Mesquite, Texas is notable for its power infrastructure, with an on-site substation and initial capacity of 40 megawatts, with the ability to expand to 100 megawatts as tenants are added. In an industry obsessed with the cost and capacity of electricity power, developers CAPSTAR Commercial Real Estate Services and The Cambay Group are leading with the power story.

Yesterday the town of Mesquite said it had granted the developers 10-year, 50 percent abatements on both real property improvements and business personal property.  “Our commitment to 3000 Skyline is evident in the business inventive package and consistent with the city’s immediate goal of generating business now,” said Tom Palmer, Mesquite’s economic development manager.   

Word of the 3000 Skyline Dallas property emerged late last year from public meetings where the developers described their plans to convert the former AT&T/Lucent facility into a data center. The first phase of the 700,000 square foot facility is scheduled for completion in the first quarter of 2010. Located in the City of Mesquite, Texas, nine miles from the Dallas central business district, the facility boasts its own on-site substation that will feature 100 megawatts of power provided by Oncor Electric Delivery Company.

“At the stage of development that we’re in, every detail is important,” said Bret Bunnett, CAPSTAR president. “But the most crucial element is the electric power provider, and we are very pleased with the cooperation and leadership we are experiencing with Oncor. They have been reassuring and thoroughly professional. We know that they’ll deliver what we require and more.”

The facility can be divided into four quadrants, which each have access to 20 megawatts of power and are equipped with separate internal entrance for individual user security. Scalable data center spaces are divisible from 45,000 square feet to 770,000 square feet.

The architectural firm of RTKL has designed the facility, and the firm of Thornton Tomasetti is providing structural engineering consulting.

Woodforest currently houses its production systems in-house within their data center located in The Woodlands, Texas and has a back-up environment in a Woodforest facility in North Texas.

“Austin is an ideal location for back-up and disaster recovery systems,” said Jim Duke, CIO for Woodforest National Bank. “It is close enough to our Houston headquarters for easy access, yet far enough away to provide the redundancy that is absolutely key for the financial services industry. The Austin area’s stable weather, reliable connectivity and robust data network create the high level of reliability critical to our business. ”

“Woodforest needed a carrier-neutral facility for connectivity, plus the infrastructure for today’s high-density IT assets,” said David Ferdman, president and chief executive officer for CyrusOne. “Our new high density, high availability data center is ideally located to provide our clients with access to multiple carriers and high-speed data connections.”

CyrusOne maintains seven facilities totaling 480,000 square feet in Texas, including two facilities in Houston, three in Dallas and one in Austin. The Austin facility can provide up to 1,000 watts of power per square foot, according to CyrusOne.