Capgemini Leases Space from DRT in Paris

Digital Realty Trust (DLR) has completed a lease agreement with outsourcing specialist Capgemini, which this summer will begin operating a Turn-Key Datacentre in a Digital Realty Trust property in France.

“We are delighted to be working with Capgemini on this important datacentre project for its global IT strategy,” said Bernard Geoghegan, Senior Vice President, International Operations of Digital Realty Trust. “Our Turn-Key Datacentre is an ideal solution for corporate customers such as Capgemini, allowing them to focus on deploying their IT systems in a timely, cost effective manner with a datacentre infrastructure partner they can rely on for the long term.”

LEED Gold for Digital Realty Santa Clara Site

Digital Realty Trust (DLR) has earned a LEED Gold certification from the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) for its 1500 Space Park facility in Santa Clara, Calif., the company said Monday. In 2007 Digital Realty became the first developer to earn a Gold Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification for a data center back for a Chicago facility.

Digital Realty did not identify the tenant in the LEED Gold facility. But it appears to be Yahoo (YHOO), which said that it had signed a lease with Digital Realty for a Turn-Key data center that was on track for Gold LEED certification. The Santa Clara facility was certified using the LEED for Commercial Interior (LEED-CI) program.

“The LEED-CI certification for 1500 Space Park recognizes our holistic approach to making efficiency and sustainability key factors in the way we design, build and operate our facilities,” said Jim Smith, CTO of Digital Realty Trust. “”We use LEED guidelines as a best practice for our entire portfolio of datacenters, and have 10 additional datacenter projects currently in the LEED certification process, a sign of our commitment to energy efficiency and environmental sustainability.”

ServeCentric Expands with Digital in Dublin

ServeCentric, Ireland’s leading managed services and data centre operator, will lease space in Digital Realty Trust’s property in Dublin, the two companies said today. The deal marked the latest success for Digital Realty’s Turn-Key Datacentre offering which provides finished data center space to tenants, allowing them to move in and quickly bring a facility online.

“Digital Realty Trust’s Turn-Key Datacentres enable managed services companies like ServeCentric to respond rapidly to their customers’ needs with an ideal datacentre environment to support their mission critical applications,” said Brent Behrman, Vice President of Digital Realty Trust. “Our Turn-Key Datacentres significantly reduce the amount of time required to bring a new datacentre online, from months or years to only weeks. That is a tremendous competitive advantage to datacentre operators and hosting companies that are seeing strong demand for their services.”

Digital Realty Trust has two data center buildings in Dublin.

Digital Realty Expands Ashburn Campus

One of the data centers at the Digital Realty Trust campus in Ashburn, Va.

Digital Realty Trust has acquired 34 acres next to its huge data center campus in Ashburn, Virginia and will use the land to add as much as 400,000 square feet of new data center space. The company has already begun construction on a 135,000 square foot data center that will come online in the fourth quarter of this year.

The expansion by Digital Realty, the largest data center landlord, is driven by dwindling data center capacity in northern Virginia, where large users of data center infrastructure have recently signed leases to lock down finished space. Digital Realty says there are more big leases on the horizon.

“The addition of the property contiguous to our existing facilities in Ashburn allows us to create a datacenter campus environment that will deliver significant operating economies of scale and sufficient new inventory to meet the ongoing demand in this top tier market,” said Michael F. Foust, Chief Executive Officer of Digital Realty Trust. “We currently are tracking a significant number of datacenter requirements in the market and are on schedule to complete the construction of the next phase, a 135,000 square foot facility, in the fourth quarter of 2009.”

Is Digital Realty Going Shopping?

After reporting another quarter of solid earnings, data center developer Digital Realty Trust (DLR) is looking at acquisition opportunities, company executives said Thursday. With more than $770 million in cash at hand, the real estate investment trust has boosted its data center redevelopment budget and is evaluating acquisitions.

“There are a couple of potential deals we’re looking at,” said Digital Realty Trust CEO Michael Foust. “We are starting to see some income-producing opportunities. You’ll probably see us doing a couple of income-producing deals this year.”

Income properties generate revenue through rent from existing tenants. In recent years, Digital Realty has focused much of its acquisition efforts on buying unoccupied buildings for conversion into plug-and-play data center space that can command premium rents.       

Lee Technologies to Manage DRT Facilities

Lee Technologies has been selected by Digital Realty Trust, Inc. (DLR) to operate 10 of its data center facilities around the United States, the companies said today. Lee Technologies, which supplies staff to manage data center infrastructure, said it needed just a month to transition a team of 35 facility technicians to support the 10 Digital Realty Trust data centers in Phoenix, Chicago, St. Louis, Dallas and Houston.

“Lee Technologies quickly demonstrated its mission-critical expertise after successfully providing facility operations at our Paris and Dublin data centers, and we have full confidence they will deliver the same level of performance across these U.S. multi-customer facilities,” said Chris Crosby, Senior Vice President of Digital Realty Trust. “With Lee Technologies’ facility technicians at 10 of our primary mission-critical, multi-customer facilities will enable us to continue to deliver a five 9’s level of reliability in our Turn-Key Datacenter facilities as we have for the past four years.”

Digital Realty Raises $260M in Debt Offering

Digital Realty Trust (DLR) has raised $260 million through a private placement of debt, the company said today. Digital Realty, the largest landlord of data center properties, said it will use the funding to repay borrowings from its revolving credit facility, acquire additional properties and fund development and redevelopment opportunities.

On Tuesday Digital Realty Trust announced plans to sell $200 million in debt, with the potential to raise an additional $30 million through an overallotment. Instead, the offering raised $260 million, and the company said it has granted the purchasers a 30-day option to buy another $40 million to cover over-allotments.

The Exchangeable Senior Debentures will pay 5.5 percent and come due 2029. They are exchangeable for shares of DLR common stock at an initial exchange rate of 23.2 shares per $1,000 principal amount. The initial exchange price of $43.00 represents a 20 percent premium over yesterday’s closing price of $35.83 per share.

Digital Realty on Modular Design

We’ve often noted the growing use of video by companies in the data center realm, and will be writing more about this in days to come. I came across a good example of this today from Digital Realty Trust, which has introduced a “Myth of the Month” video feature in which executives of the data center REIT present their perspective on industry issues. “The datacenter world moves pretty fast and unfortunately so does a good deal of misinformation,” Digital writes in introducing the feature.

In the first installment, Digital Realty Trust Senior Vice President Chris Crosby discusses the “Myth of Modularity,” seeking to contrast the company’s approach to modular construction featuring pods with dedicated power infrastructure with offerings that segment the facility into modular units but used a shared power spine. These type of video presentations give providers a way to differentiate their offerings in an accessible format. We’ve seen social media, in both blogs and videos, lead to vigorous discussions of the merits of different approaches to technology and design in areas like storage networking. It looks like there’s more of this ahead for the data center sector as well.