European Data Center Revenue May Double

Several stories from recent weeks highlight the vibrant data center industry in Europe. Here’s a roundup:

European data centre revenue set to double
A report published by Tariff Consultancy Ltd notes that European data centre revenue is “set to more than double over the five year period from 2010 to 2015, with net raised floor space to increase by 70%, driven primarily by price increases.” The report gives pricing and forecasts for 19 of the EU25 countries and analyzes pricing of a standard 19″ rack, a small cage space and a 50 KVA suite of space for each of the countries.  It also dives into trends impacting data centres such as raised floor capacity in markets, revenue per square meter forecasts, electricity pricing, pricing per rack and cage, and the most expensive data centre countries.

Savvis received EuroFIT award
Financial technology publication Waters published their innagural EuroFIT awards earlier in the month, to recognize Europe’s hottest financial IT products and services.  In the category of Best Datacenter Hosting Provider, Savvis (SVVS) took the award as a company capitalizing on the rising demand for data center services.  Equinix was listed as an honorable mention in the category. A little over a year ago Savvis marked the completion of a global data center expansion by opening a 37,500 square foot facility on the outskirts of London in Slough. The award also noted that Savvis services seven of the top ten Fortune 500 financial services and banking firms. Amazon (AMZN) won the Best Cloud Provider award as an “overwhelming leader in the field.”

The Bunker selected by Cimar
The Bunker announced that it was selected by Cimar (UK) Limited to provide managed ultra secure hosting of its radiology image sharing web service. The Bunker delivered a scalable platform to Cimar built on Microsoft technology.  Howard Jenkinson, managing director of Cimar said “absolute information security is a pre-requisite for any digital service carrying sensitive patient information.”  Click here for a video of ‘The Bunker’ and details of a July 2009 130,000 square foot expansion.

Video Tour: Telecity Powergate Data Center

UK data center services provider Telecity Group operates eight data centres in the London market offering more than 24,000 square meters of customer space. The newest of these is Telecity’s Powergate data center, which offers 5,000 square metres of customer space and 10 megawatts (MW) of power capacity. The data centre, which opened in 2008, has been designed to provide 4 kilowatts (kW) of customer power per rack as standard, with high density zones offering up to 20 kW per rack. The facility is supported by 12 diesel backup generators. Here’s a 5 minute video tour:

For more coverage of ithe European data center market, check out our Data Centres Europe Channel. For additional video, check out our DCK video archive and the Data Center Videos channel on YouTube.

Roundup: Ciena, Equinix, Rackspace

Here’s a roundup of news announcements from the data center and hosting industry:

• Ciena acquires Nortel Ethernet assets. Ciena Corporation announced that they were selected as the successful bidder in the auction for all of the optical networking and carrier Ethernet assets of Nortel’s Metro Ethernet Networks business.  Ciena has agreed to pay $769 million for the assets.  Ciena CEO Gary Smith said the purchase is “bringing together complementary technologies in switching and transport to create an innovative powerhouse with the scale to challenge the industry status quo and offer customers a practical path for transitioning to automated, optical Ethernet-based networking.”  In 2008 Nortel saw $1.36 billion in revenue from the assets to be acquired.
• Equinix adds to European Ethernet Exchange.  Earlier in the month Equinix announced that submarine transport cable provider Hibernia Atlantic was expanding with Equinix in New York. Now European-based carriers Exponential-e and Tinet have signed up to participate in the recently announced Carrier Ethernet Exchange platform.  The initial deployment locations include London, New York, Chicago and Silicon Valley.  The goal of the project is to provide Ethernet Network to Network Interconnections (E-NNI).  VP of Engineering at Exponential-e Mukesh Bavisi said “Equinix already plays a strategic role in our peering relationships with other Tier 1 service providers, so it is a natural choice that we leverage its carrier-rich interconnection hubs to develop an Ethernet interconnection infrastructure.”  According to Infonetics Research demand for carrier Ethernet services is set to double within five years.
• Rackspace offers complete Verisign SSL line.  Rackspace announced that they expanded an agreement with Verisign allowing them to directly sell, install and renew Verisign SLL Certificates to their customers.  Additionally the entire line of certificates is now available as a self-service option via the MyRackspacecom customer portal.  “Trust is the most valuable currency on the Internet today, and trust is what VeriSign SSL and EV SSL protection delivers for Web site operators the world over,” said Michael Lin, vice president and general manager of SSL at VeriSign.

Progress on $1.5 Billion Scotland Data Center

This farmland near Lockerbie, Scotland could become one of the world's largest data center developments. Construction is slated to begin next year on a $1.5 billion project by Lockerbie Data Centres.

A massive $1.5 billion data center project near Lockerbie, Scotland is a step closer to reality after receiving the blessing of local planning officials. Lockerbie Data Centres Ltd. proposed building the £950 million project, which it says may generate a total of £3.5 billion in investment in the region. 

Planning officials at the local Dumfries and Galloway Council have recommended the company’s application be approved by the town council, which will meet Nov. 25 to discuss the project. The developers hope this will lay the groundwork for construction to begin in mid-2010 and opening for business in late 2011.

Roundup: Indiana University, Telecity, Cisco

Here’s a roundup of news announcements from the data center and hosting industry:

• Indiana University to Unveil Data Center: Indiana University announced Monday that their $32.7 million data center will be unveiled Nov. 5.  The 82,700 square foot facility houses critical computing, networking and storage equipment (over 2.8 petabytes) that serve the University.  Indiana University is also home to supercomputers Big Red and Quarry and the hub of Indiana’s statewide I-Light fiber network. The University also has an agreement with the Indiana Office of Technology that provides the state with backup data space and network connectivity. The data center will be be the foundation of a new IU Bloomington Technology Park.
• Telecity’s Demand-led Capacity Expansion:. European data center provider Telecity Group issued an interim management statement Monday highlighting several positive growth trends.  With a healthy pipeline, revenue growth has continued to be in line with management’s expectations. Meeting strong customer demand in existing markets, TelecityGroup has delivered incremental new capacity in London, Amersterdam, Frankfurt, Stockholm and Milan to date this year.  A new Paris 3 data center is on schedule to open in December 2009. ”Our premium data centres continue to win new and expanded customer orders, with the most notable wins in the third quarter coming from the content, connectivity, financial and application provider segments,”  said Telecity CEO Michael Tobin. Telecity Group operates 22 network independent data centers across seven European countries and is headquartered in London.

NGD Gets Funding for Huge Facility in Wales

An exterior view of the Next Generation Data Ltd. facility in Newport, Wales.

Next Generation Data Ltd has secured “significant” debt financing from a unit of the Royal Bank of Scotland, which will help it complete one of the world’s largest data center projects. NGD is building a 750,000 square foot data center facility in the twon of Newport in South Wales.

The huge facility was previously used as an LG semiconductor plant, but has been empty since it was completed in 1998. NGD is converting the site into a three-story data center facility that will feature more than 375,000 square feet of technical space, enough capacity for more than 17,000 cabinets of servers and storage.

Financing Called ‘Critical’
The developer said the funding from Lombard, the asset finance arm of the Royal Bank of Scotland, would help it meet its goal of having the first phase of the data center ready for occupancy in early 2010.  

Roundup: Level 3, Akamai, Liebert

Here’s a roundup of news announcements from the data center and hosting industry:

• Akamai Reports Third Quarter 2009 Results. Wednesday Akamai released financial results for the period ending September 30, 2009.  Revenue was up 5% year over year at $206.5 million and cash flow from operations up 13% year over year at $105.2 million. “Our results demonstrated our ability to leverage the Company’s unique cost structure and scale while improving performance and reliability for our enterprise-class customers,” said CEO Paul Sagan. During the third quarter the company repurchased approximately 2 million shares of common stock for $36.2 million at an average price of $18.41 per share.  Customers with recurring contracts at the end of the third quarter increased to a record 3,031; an 8% increase year over year.  It was also reported that Akamai is conducting an internal probe on insider trading after an unnamed executive was implicated in a massive insider trading scandal.  No Akamai official has yet been named or charged in the case.
• New Next Generation Data Wales facility. European data center specialist Next Generation Data announced the opening of a $326 million data center in Wales, U.K. Known as NGD Europe, it is the largest of its kind in the U.K. and one of the largest in Europe. The 700,000 square foot space was formerly a semiconductor plant and can be divided into multiple areas for individual clients. Several blue-chip companies have signed long-term contracts and Next Generation Data is offering a range of wholesale space-only contracts to large companies. NGD Europe has numerous security features, such as prison grade perimeter fencing, biometric recognition and ex-special forces security guards, bomb-proof glass and triple-skinned walls.

Roundup: NaviSite, EvoSwitch, Akamai, IBM

Here’s a roundup of some of some of this week’s headlines from the data center and hosting industry:

• New NaviSite data center in Charlotte.  On Thursday NaviSite announced the addition of a new data center facility located in Charlotte, North Carolina.  The new facility will allow NaviSite to meet the increasing hosting demands of new and existing customers in the southeastern region of the U.S.  NaviSite is partnering with DCI Technology Holdings, the owner of the Charlotte facility. NaviSite will release fourth quarter and fiscal year 2009 results on October 15, 2009.
• EvoSwitch signs EU code of conduct. Dutch carrier-neutral data center provider EvoSwitch announced it has signed the EU code of conduct on data centres energy efficiency.  The voluntary contract is made up of guidelines, recommendations and examples of best practice to save energy in data centers.  European data centers that sign this agreement will be obliged to reduce their energy consumption by 20% by the year 2020.  The Amsterdam based EvoSwitch consumes 40% less energy than traditional data centers today.  Managing Director of EvoSwitch Eric Boonstra said “The EU Code of Conduct for Data Centres Energy Efficiency is a good European initiative and will hopefully motivate more data centers in Europe to invest in reducing their energy consumption.”

Intel, T-Systems Build ‘Data Center 2020′ Lab

A look at part of the lab area at Data Center 2020 near Munich, a joint research project on data center efficiency from Intel and T-Systems.

Intel and T-Systems have jointly unveiled a data center efficiency lab outside Munich, Germany, which they have dubbed Data Center 2020. The lab will focus on testing various cooling and design scenarios to analyze the factors that impact the total cost of data centers and create a blueprint for building the data center of the future.

“This project is the first and only one worldwide that is devoted completely to the issue of energy efficiency in data centers,” says Olaf Heyden, T-Systems director and head of ICT Operations. “Since the energy consumption of data centers worldwide is on the rise, the analysis will play a key role in minimizing CO2
emissions and lowering costs. And since environmental protection concerns all of us, we will publish the findings of our research online.”