Hosting.com Gets $2M for Colo Expansion

Hosting.com said Friday that it has completed a $2 million round of funding with CapitalSouth Partners, LLC, and will use the money to expand its colocation business. The financing will allow Hosting.com to deploy custom-built micro-data centers of 2,000 to 20,000 square feet inside its five data centers.

Hosting.com is a regional data center firm based in Charlotte, with facilities in Boston, Louisville, San Francisco and Irvine, Calif. The company says it has benefited from companies shifting their data center expansion from company-built facilities to third party colocation.

“We are receiving more calls from enterprises looking to save capital and improve their operational efficiencies by avoiding data center builds,” said Jonathan Erwin, VP of Sales and Marketing at Hosting.com.

Art Zeile Discusses Plans for HostMySite.com

Veterans of the data center industry will remember InFlow, the Denver-based chain of data centers that focused on second-tier markets, and was purchased by Sungard in late 2004. Former Inflow CEO Art Zeile is back in the Internet infrastructure business, being named CEO of HostMySite.com after its acquisition by Wachovia Capital. In a recent interview with Anastasia Tubanos from WHIR TV, Art talks about his career in the data center industry and what’s ahead for HostMySite.com.

For additional videos about the data center industry, check out our DCK video archive and the Data Center Videos channel on YouTube.

The Planet Secures $45 Million Loan

Defying an historic credit crunch, The Planet said today that it has secured a new $45 million credit facility, with Wachovia Bank supplying $30 million while Bank of America chips in $15 million. The Houston-based company, which specialized in dedicated servers and managed hosting, said it will use the funding to expand, perhaps through acquisitions. 

“This financing will fund our demand-driven expansion plans and strategic initiatives over the next few years,” said Doug Erwin, The Planet’s Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. “In the near future, we will make several announcements relative to our strategic areas of investment.”

Mapping Global Hosting Customers

In our previous post we noted the large percentage of international customers at The Planet. They’re not the only large U.S. provider that hosts a large  contingent of overseas customers. SoftLayer recently used Google Maps to present a visual overviewof its global customer base, which includes sites from 111 countries ranging from Christchurch, New Zealand to Lakselv, Norway.  

The Planet Expands Peering with Equinix

The Planet is beefing up its network by adding new nodes in Equinix colocation facilities in San Jose, Calif., and Ashburn, Va., The Planet, one of the largest hosting companies, said the access to additional networks through peering connections at the Equinix data centers will “significantly enhance network performance and latency.”

Network performance is important for large U.S. providers, serving as a major selling point for international customers who seek to host in American data centers because of their superior connectivity. About 42 percent of The Planet’s 22,000 customers are international.

Telus Plans $33M Data Center in Quebec

Telus will invest $33 million in a new data center in Laval, Quebec, which will be designed to meet the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards and Tier III reliability. The 44,500 square foot facility will have six mega-volt-amps (MVA) of power capacity, and take advantage of Quebec’s cold climate to use “free cooling” (air-side economizers) for two thirds of the year.

“This investment in Quebec will support our clients’ growing need for more powerful IT infrastructure while having one of the lowest carbon footprints of all data centres in North America,” said Karen Radford, president of Telus Québec. Telus is very proud to be leading the way to a healthier and greener future for our team members and our customers in Quebec, and around the world.”

Telus has begun retrofitting the existing structure in Laval, and plane to open the facility in 2010. Telus currently operates eight data centers across Canada.

Data Center Photos: 1&1’s Lenexa Facility

1&1 Internet is one of the world’s largest web hosting companies. The company is based in Germany (its parent is United Internet), but also has significant operations in the U.S. and United Kingdom. A key hub in the company’s American operations is its 54,000 square foot data center in Lenexa, Kansas, which houses 860 racks. Information Week recently had a look inside the 1&1 Lenexa facility, and has published a slideshow of 13 data center photos.

The 1&1 Internet facility is also the “mystery data center” featured in our Name That Data Center contest. Congrats to Chris, who made the connection in the comments.

Carrier Hotels Profiled in NY Times

The New York Times published a special section on small business in Tuesday’s paper, which includes an article on carrier hotels, the multi-tenant bandwidth hubs in the central business districts of major cities. Here’s an excerpt:

The premier addresses of the Internet age include 56 Marietta Street in Atlanta, 210 North Tucker Avenue in St. Louis and 111 Eighth Avenue in Manhattan. They go by a variety of names, like carrier hotels, Internet peering points and co-locations. And while they may not be located in the fanciest office buildings, and many of them are not in the best parts of town, they are the best places for businesses to get online, taking advantage of huge swaths of reliable bandwidth at a relatively low cost.

Carrier hotels have long been the cornerstones of the Internet economy, and represent some of the most successful properties in the colocation industry. Given the recent buzz around cloud computing and cheap utility hosting for startups, it’s interesting to see The Times feature colocation in carrier hotels as an Internet play for small businesses. The article includes a brief guide to buying colo services.