NaviSite Shopping Its Colocation Business

Navisite (NAVI) says it will move ahead with a plan to sell its colocation business, even though the company has regained compliance with the NASDAQ Stock Market guidelines on minimum market valuations. NaviSite decided to seek buyers for its colocation business as part of a strategic plan to address its NASDAQ compliance challenges, but an improvement in the company’s stock price helped NaviSite meet the exchange’s minimum market cap of $35 million for 10 consecutive sessions.

But NaviSite says it will focus on building its higher-margin enterprise application hosting and cloud platform and use revenues from the asset sale to de-leverage its finances. “The company continues to pursue its strategic plan in order to improve the company’s balance sheet by reducing its debt obligations and focus on its core businesses for growth and performance,” NaviSite said in a statement Tuesday.

Opera Unite: Should Hosts Be Worried?

A look at the Opera Unite interface. The newest update includes a web server.

Has Opera reinvented the Internet? Or just come up with an interesting niche project for enthusiasts? Opera Unite transforms the web browser into a server, allowing users to share files and photos or even run a web site from within their browser (so long as the web site doesn’t require PHP).

Opera is clearly targeting the web hosting and data center industry, hoping to build a business platform atop browser-based sites and services previously hosted by service providers. And it’s using loaded terminology, with an introductory video attacking “servers belonging to strangers” and asserting that web sites are “at the mercy of middlemen who control the servers of the world.”

Cyrus One Continues Expansion in Houston

High-density colocation specialist CyrusOne will build a new 94,000 square foot data center in West Houston, with an option to add a second 100,000 square foot facility on adjacent property, the company said today. The expansion will eventually give the company more than 480,000 square feet of space in seven data centers in Texas, including three facilities in Houston, three in Dallas and one in Austin.

“Our decision to build a third data center facility in Houston is based on increased local, national and international customer demand as companies are restructuring their data center strategies in an ever-changing economy,” said David Ferdman, President and CEO, CyrusOne. “Since our entrance into the Houston market in 2001, we have built a strong momentum within the energy, financial services, and technology industries, as companies are realizing the benefits of data center colocation, including scalability of infrastructure, deferred capital expenditures associated with building a data center and increased availability of critical applications.”

Domain Name Buying Rebounds

Did the domain name business just see a bounce? Registration of new domain names rebounded in the first quarter of 2009 after four consecutive quarters of decline. Most significantly, there was a 17 percent jump in the registration of .com and .net domains, which are the best barometers of domain purchases for business use.  

Does this reflect optimism among businesses starting web sites? That’s certainly part of the reason, but there are other factors in the mix, according to VeriSign, which issued the data in its quarterly Domain Name Industry Brief. VeriSign says the first quarter is typically the strongest period for domain name sales. 

Hmmmm … must be the impact of all those Go Daddy Super Bowl ads.

Roundup: Fortrust, Carpathia, Ironscale, Sentilla

The river of news keeps flowing. Here’s another roundup:

• High-availability data center provider Fortrust said today that it will offer Remote Data Backup services from Incentra to both current customers and companies that are not colocated in the data center. The service will allow companies that have several locations to back up their data to one secure location. “Remote Data Backup and restoration really provides two layers of data protection at once,” said Rob McClary, vice president of Fortrust. “It provides automated, managed data protection for companies that are resource-constrained, and as part of the process provides remote storage of that data as a default, so that companies don’t have to worry about managing off-site data storage and archiving as well.”
• Managed hosting provider Carpathia Hosting has been selected by organizations such as Echo360, Nuvolus, Ventraq, Voices Heard Media and a leading federal systems integrator to provide customized managed cloud solutions using its Carpathia AlwaysOn/InstantOn hybrid model. Components of the AlwaysOn/InstantOn model are highly flexible and can be used to design custom solutions to meet the specific needs of individual organizations.

Roundup: Telx, Switch & Data, Tiscali

It’s been an extremely busy week for data center news. Here’s a roundup of some of the announcements in the hosting and networking space:

• Interconnection specialist Telx announced that custom network provider CFN Services has added network nodes for its ultra low latency financial network in Telx facilities at 60 Hudson Street and 111 8th Avenue in New York City as well as in 600 South Federal Street in Chicago. These new nodes provide Telx Financial Exchange customers colocated in New York, New Jersey, and Chicago with access to CFN’s ultra low latency network. “In the current market, financial services companies need every advantage available to thrive,” says Eric Shepcaro, CEO of Telx. “The suite of financial service providers and ultra low latency networks, such as those offered by CFN, are critical to our customers’ success.”
• Colocation and interconnection provider Switch and Data (SDXC) said Wednesday that Canadian online dating site Lavalife Corp. has colocated its infrastructure in Switch and Data’s 151 Front Street data center in downtown Toronto. Lavalife is consolidating its Toronto operations into one location, and picked Switch and Data to house its corporate infrastructure and expand its network interconnectivity options.
• Tiscali International Network, the former carrier arm of Tiscali Group, announced the completion of its acquisition by private equity firm BS Private Equity. The company will be rebranded as “Tinet” and announced plans to deploy a third Network Operations Centre (NOC) in the USA. “With the backing of a major Private Equity firm, we are in a strong position to consolidate our growth in the market”, said Paolo Susnik, CEO of Tinet. Rob Powell has more at Telecom Ramblings.

Savvis Extends Deal with Thomson Reuters

Savvis Communications (SVVS) will continue to provide managed hosting and network services for Thomson Reuters, which has signed a three-year extension of its master services agreement, the companies announced today. Savvis’ relationship with Reuters has been of interest to securities analysts following the media company’s acquisition last year by Thomson.

At the time of the merger, Reuters was a $50 million contract for Savvis. Thomson Reuters announced a one-year extension with Savvis in June 2008, and today’s renewal adds another three years.

“Thomson Reuters has a longstanding relationship with Savvis and this newly extended agreement allows us to continue to create exciting new opportunities for customers worldwide,” said Bill Fathers, Savvis Senior Vice President, and Managing Director U.S. “As an important provider of IT infrastructure to Thomson Reuters across three continents, we are committed to delivering best-in-class solutions to its growing customer base.”

SingleHop Expands with ServerCentral

The DuPont Fabros CH1 facility, where SingleHop has leased space from ServerCentral.

Managed hosting provider SingleHop has expanded its footprint within ServerCentral’s 10,000 square feet of colocation space in Elk Grove Village, Illinois. SingleHop says it entered into a $2.5 million agreement with ServerCentral, which is a tenant in the DuPont Fabros Technology CH1 data center.

The new space can support power densities of 12 kilowatts per cabinet (210 watts per square foot). Its the second data center for SingleHop, which also operates a facility in downtown Chicago housing 2,000 servers. SingleHop was founded in 2006 by Chicago entrepreneurs Dan Ushman and Zak Boca and says it has annual revenue of $4.5 million.

“The additional space enables geographic redundancy and disaster recovery capabilities,” said Brandon Ewing, SingleHop’s Senior Network Engineer. “Customers will benefit as they have more room for growth and more options for redundancy. The new data center gives SingleHop a platform from which to continue heavily investing in a wide and robust network both at our original data center and the new facility.”