Voxel is backed by Seaport Capital, which invested $5.5 million in the company earlier this year. Voxel is based in New York and offers hosting services atop an automation platform called VoxSTRUCTURE. Its services include on-demand physical and virtual cloud servers, a global content delivery network (CDN), and a full suite of managed services.  The company hass more than 1,000 customers and 50 employees.

Internap said Voxel’s automation platform will enable it to offer additional self-service options for customers, a key capability as companies seek to accelerate their deployment of IT infrastructure. Voxel’s dedicated hosting offering features robust online interface and comprehensive API that enables customers to provision services in minutes. It also allows users to seamlessly integrate physical servers and cloud instances in the same environment.

Internap said Voxel also gives Internap improved access to early- to mid-stage  customers seeking dedicated hosting services, a high-growth market.

“This acquisition of Voxel increases Internap’s market share and growth rate, accelerates our product roadmap and creates an unmatched competitive position as an IT Infrastructure services provider,” said Eric Cooney , president and chief executive officer of Internap. ”As IT Infrastructure outsourcing advances, enterprises increasingly seek service providers to support myriad applications and workloads throughout their entire IT lifecycle.”

The Voxel acquisition also expands Internap’s infrastructure. Voxel has  deployed infrastructure across three continents, leasing space in eight Equinix data centers around the globe. In its release announcing the deal, Internap mentioned that it would add Voxel locations in Amsterdam and Singapore.

“We are excited to be joining Internap, a company that shares our commitment to developing innovative IT Infrastructure solutions to drive the next generation of Internet and cloud applications,” said Raul Martynek , president and chief executive officer of Voxel. “The combination of Internap’s broad market presence and robust, high-performance IT Infrastructure platform with our expertise in automated hosting and cloud services will deliver a powerful option for a broad range of enterprise customers.”

Investment banking firm DH Capital served as financial advisor for Voxel.

Salesforce.com opens Tokyo data center. Salesforce.com (CRM) and NTT Communications announced today that salesforce.com’s Tokyo data center has gone live. Housed in a NTT  data center, the Tokyo data center will support adoption of salesforce.com’s social enterprise services among the company’s rapidly growing customer base across Japan and Asia Pacific. “Salesforce.com continues to expand its infrastructure to support the adoption of the social enterprise among our rapidly growing global customer base,” said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO of salesforce.com. “The opening of our Tokyo data center with our trusted partner NTT Communications represents a long-term commitment to our customers across Japan and Asia Pacific.”

Telx selected by Justin.tv.  Telx announced that Justin.tv has selected Telx as its mission-critical infrastructure colocation provider for the launch of TwitchTV, a new online gaming community. Already a customer in the Telx San Francisco C3 Cloud Connection Center, Justin.tv has expanded its vital gaming infrastructure in this key location, leveraging an industry-leading community of telecommunications carriers and ISPs. Justin.tv lets users stream video content live to the Internet from their webcams and mobile phones. “While Justin.tv is powered by several global data centers, Telx’s San Francisco facility is the ‘brains’ of our infrastructure operations,” said Jonathan Shipman, Director of Operations, Justin.tv.  ”Telx has been a vital partner for us as we execute our growth strategy to include the gaming customer base. We have leveraged the large community of network providers Telx offers in this location for three years. When it came time to launch our online gaming community, TwitchTV, we were able to expand our presence with Telx in an organized, cost-effective way.

Internap opens Dallas Fort Worth data center.  Internap Network Services (INAP) announced the official opening of its new data center in the Dallas/Fort Worth (DFW) market, located in Plano, Texas. The DFW facility offers 55,000 square feet of floor space and will provide access to Internap’s platform of IT Infrastructure services, including managed hosting and colocation, as well as its global, route-optimized Performance IP service. An exclusive open house and networking event at the facility will be held on December 15th for facility tours.  A virtual tour of the facility can be viewed here.  “The new Internap DFW facility has been designed from the ground up to serve the advanced IT Infrastructure demands of enterprises in the DFW area and beyond – from its flexible, high-performance platform that can scale on demand with customers’ business needs to cutting-edge power and cooling capabilities,” said Mike Higgins, senior vice president of data center services at Internap. “With this opening, Internap also continues to deliver on our strategy to build a geographically diverse footprint of premium, company-owned data centers in key markets.”

Peak 10 selected by iPractice Group.  Peak 10 announced today that it is delivering cloud and managed services to Nashville-based healthcare technology company iPractice Group. iPractice will utilize Peak 10′s cloud solutions and managed services to deliver its all-inclusive IT services for independent medical practices. “We chose Peak 10 because the company has a great reputation in the market, offers unparalleled expertise and was able to provide us with a comprehensive portfolio of services,” said Jason Morgan, iPractice Group’s chief operating officer. “Peak 10’s interconnected network of data centers and its numerous compliance certifications will be a valuable enhancement to our IT infrastructure.”

Internap says its Open Public Cloud compute service offers high-performance, on-demand provisioning and scaling of enterprise computing capacity to meet changing Web and application demands.

“This is the first step for Internap’s OpenStack public cloud to be released to the market,” said Josh Crowe, SVP of engineering, who oversees Product Engineering at Internap. “Because OpenStack is nascent, there were lots of features and functions to be addressed – enterprise billing, security, networking, etc.

“We anticipate future steps,” Crowe said. “We have ideas around networking capabilities, templated applications and multi-tenant capabilities to add to OpenStack.”

The company previously brought out its Custom Public Cloud, a VMware-based compute cloud. Thus Internap allows customers to chose either the VMWare or OpenStack cloud environments.

The OpenStack platform offers a set of standardized APIs allowing customers to utilize the cloud without worrying about being locked in to a single provider.

Internap is known for its expertise in IP optimization and offers a global Performance IP network, with a 100% uptime SLA, that is fully-integrated with its cloud services.

Internap is offering multiple options such as:

Open Public Cloud: A highly-scalable, cost-effective public cloud with a management interface and APIs that can meet dynamic capacity needs on demand. Based on the OpenStack platform, this service leverages the low-cost, open source Xen Cloud Platform and is integrated with Internap’s OpenStack-based cloud storage offering for maximum flexibility.

Custom Public Cloud: A “pay-as-you-go,” multi-tenant public cloud that speeds adoption and delivery by leveraging the VMware platform, thereby eliminating the need to re-architect applications that have already been virtualized internally. Customers can architect tailored cloud configurations and create customized network configurations on demand through VMware’s vCloud Director portal.

One of the companies that has been mentioned often is Internap, which has forged a comeback over the past several years as it focused on beefing up its colocation services. The company has expanded its data center space (most recently in Los Angeles, Dallas and Boston.

In an interview this week with Reuters, Internap CEO Eric Cooney looked to squash speculation that the company was an acquisition prospect.

“I am not shopping the company and we listen to any offers that come in and respond accordingly,” Cooney told Reuters. “At this stage the best value for our shareholders is to continue executing our organic growth plan.”

For more, read the Reuters story.

Internap Santa Clara receives Green Globes Certification.  Internap Network Services (INAP) announced that their Santa Clara colocation facility has achieved Green Globes certification, following a rigorous review process by the Green Buildings Initiative (GBI). This marks the first Green Globes certification of a public data center in the U.S. as well as the first non-governmental building in California. Items that contributed to Internap receiving the certification included use of relcaimed water, reuse of building materials, 50 percent reduction in energy use with the Energy Star Target Finder tool, green power purchases and environmentally-conscious transportation features. “Internap’s Santa Clara data center highlights the success that is possible in the design and construction of an environmentally sustainable commercial building,” said Joe Pinelli, vice president and general manager of Green Globes at GBI. “The unique requirements of data centers – specifically the tremendous energy usage – typically make them a difficult fit for sustainability programs, but this project achieved excellent results and was a shining example of how to attack that problem.”

SynapSense launches energy management tools.  SynapSense Corporation introduced the next generation of energy metering tools for its data center optimization platform. Called the SynapSense Power Suite, the new tools include the SynapSense P³ SmartPlug and SmartLink that optimize energy loads, reduce stranded power and identify in real-time available power and cooling capacity. SmartLink devices connect to a data center’s smart PDUs (Power Distribution Units) and replace the IP backhaul, providing rack- and plug-level power information from most major PDU vendors “SynapSense has developed a data center optimization platform that focuses on energy management—the primary component of DCIM that results in exceptional value and return on investment for our customers,” said Peter Van Deventer, CEO of SynapSense. “Our new Power Suite technologies take our SynapSense optimization platform to the next level of productivity as we make it possible for the enterprise to move toward continuous optimization and automated control.”

nlyte slected by NNIT.  nlyte Software announced that NNIT, one of Denmark’s leading IT consultancies, has selected the nlyte DCIM solution to help it migrate its existing equipment to a brand new data center facility, and replace the organization’s current spreadsheet and Visio management tools to ensure increased performance and compliance with green legislation within its data center environment. NNIT selected nlyte after an extensive search based on technical recommendations from regarded industry peers and the nlyte emphasis on building strong customer relations. “It was clear that the nlyte DCIM suite would be the right solution to support our goals, giving us a near real-time dashboard view of all of our assets and a sophisticated level of workflow management,” said Mads Claus Henriksen, data center manager at NNIT.  “The flexibility of nlyte’s user-friendly interface makes it extremely easy to manage on an ongoing basis, which will really benefit our business when it comes to our forthcoming expansion plans.”

Internap launches cloud compute service.  Internap (INAP) announced a new on-demand cloud compute service that delivers high-performance enterprise computing capacity. Based on the OpenStack cloud platform Internap’s pay-as-you-go service provides on-demand provisioning and scaling of computing capacity to meet changing demands for web resources and applications. “The introduction of Internap’s new cloud compute service allows us to provide a complete range of intelligent IT Infrastructure solutions that effortlessly meet these demands – from cloud capacity and storage to managed hosting, colocation and a CDN – all delivered with unparalleled performance and availability to ensure mission-critical data arrives at the speed of business,” said Paul Carmody, senior vice president of product management and business development at Internap. Internap will be at Interop Las Vegas and the cloud compute service is expected in the third quarter 2011.

C7 selected by Real Property Insight. C7 Data Centers announced today that Real Property Insight (RPI) has signed an agreement to become its newest data center client. Using C7’s data center services, RPI will host corporate applications and provide customers with access to the most current property and financial information available. “We were particularly impressed with the value proposition offered by C7—outstanding service and professionalism at a reasonable price,” said Kim Thompson, President, Real Property Insight. “We were also impressed by the relationship between the data center manager and the data center support team. There is a willingness to work with us and address our unique needs.”  C7 also recently announced the addition of Level 3 Communications to its portfolio of Tier 1 carriers.

Oracle says data centers are lagging.  Oracle released research Wednesday that reveals many businesses are lagging behind in their use of innovative technology in data centers, which means they are unable to meet industry demands and respond to change quickly. The Oracle Next Generation Data Centre Index showed organizations scoring an average of 5.28 on a scale of 0 to 10, with 10 being the most sophisticated data center strategy possible.  Companies are measured for flexibility, sustainability and supportability. The research showed that more than 50 percent of respondents stated that they will need a new data center within the next two years and approximately 1 in 14 (7 percent) already need a new data center.  “While there are clear leaders, innovators and evidence of an understanding of technology benefits, overall organizations are still missing tricks and failing to return proper business value from their IT,” said Dermot O’Kelly, Senior Vice President, EMEA Hardware Sales, Oracle. “Most enterprises have an IT architecture that is hugely complex, expensive to manage and difficult and costly to scale, all of which can prevent IT from returning value to the business. Without change, many organizations will continue to lack the agility to enable them to respond quickly to business need. Our research shows that there is still much work to be done.”  A fact sheet with additional data can be downloaded here.

The Los Angeles data center will be located just 6 miles from the airport and include 55,000 square feet of sellable data center footprint over time.  The first phase of approximately 15,000 square feet will open in the second quarter of 2012.

“According to Tier 1 Research, the utilization of colocation space available in the Los Angeles area exceeds 90 percent,” said Mike Higgins, senior vice president of data center services at Internap. “With the addition of Los Angeles to our portfolio, Internap is able to provide these growing enterprises with data center space that can be tailored to their specific IT Infrastructure needs – from colocation, managed hosting and cloud services to high-performance enterprise IP and Content Delivery Network services – and can quickly scale to support their business growth requirements”

The Los Angeles data center will also feature a full range of customer amenities, including fully equipped office areas, technical workspaces, dedicated customer work environments and a full-service customer lounge.

Planning for the future

Internap says they will leverage modular designs and support power densities of up to 12 kW per cabinet. It will also employ high efficiency UPS system, free-cooling methods and other sustainable operational best practices. Internap will submit the data center for Green Globes certification, LA County Green Building Standards compliance, LEED certification and an Energy Star rating.

Internap also released first quarter 2011 financial results Thursday, with revenue of $59.4 million compared with $63.4 million in the first quarter of 2010.  The first quarter of 2011 is the last quarter impacted by a program in place to proactively churn certain less-profitable contracts in partner data centers. Cash and cash equivalents totaled $46.3 million at March 31, 2011.

“We believe the first quarter of 2011 represents an inflection point from which the company returns to top-line growth in both of our business units, Data center services and IP services,” said Eric Cooney, President and Chief Executive Officer of Internap. “Positive trends across the business including: bookings growth, reduced churn, and enhanced customer satisfaction, give us confidence in our expectation for sequential revenue growth in the second quarter.”

Q9 opens British Columbia data center.  Q9 Networks announced that less than two months after opening the first phase of its new 240,000 square foot data center in Brampton, Ontario it is expanding again, opening the first two phases of a six megawatt data center site in Kamloops, British Columbia.  The new facility will be connected to the three other Q9 data centers in western Canada and will use outside air cooling.  As a part of a previous agreement with HP, Q9 was to provide data center services to the British Columbia government. “With the Kamloops opening, we have delivered on our commitment to HP Advanced Solutions. We are also excited about the opportunity to serve new and existing business customers in Vancouver and across Western Canada from the new Kamloops location,” said Q9 CEO Osama Arafat.

Internap XIP accelerates Internet traffic. Internap (INAP) announced that Accelerated IP (XIP), a service-based Internet traffic accelerator that improves performance of enterprise web services and applications by up to four times, is now available across the company’s global data center footprint. “Businesses today have officially entered the next phase of the Internet: ‘acceleration.’ Slow sites and poor web performance can have grave implications for businesses. Even one second of latency can result in a 7% reduction of customer conversion and lost revenue,” said Amar Khan, vice president of IP Services at Internap.

F5 announces virtual appliance. F5 Networks (FFIV) announced F5 Enterprise Manager version 2.2, a centralized management solution that enables enterprises, service providers, and cloud providers to effectively monitor and manage multiple F5 BIG-IP Application Delivery Controllers (ADCs).  Providing a real-time single-pane view of the application delivery infrastructure the new software provides flexible deployment options with the new virtual edition, gives enhanced SSL management and reporting, auto-tracking of service contract end dates and support for external databases. “Enterprise Manager Virtual Edition not only helps customers cut costs while improving their overall IT agility and scalability, it also gives them the flexibility to choose how they want to configure their infrastructures, with whatever mix of physical and virtual devices they’re comfortable with,” said Jason Needham, Sr. Director of Product Management at F5.

Verizon completes first tender for Terremark.  Verizon (VZ) has completed its tender offer for Terremark, leaving them with a 71 percent share.  Noting that if it gains 90 percent of Terremark’s common stock shares Verizon said they will then merge with and into Terremark.  A second tender offer is expected for the remaining shares and expires on April 7th.

The new Dallas facility builds on Internap’s strategy to expand its platform of company-operated data centers, while reducing its reliance on colocation services offered though partners. In 2010 the company expanded in four markets, adding data center space in Seattle, Santa Clara, Houston and Boston that added of 36,500 square feet of data center space.

“The Dallas/Fort Worth metro area boasts the largest concentration of corporate headquarters in the U.S. with 10,000 companies calling the city home, including numerous organizations ranked on the Fortune 500,” said Mike Higgins, senior vice president of data center services at Internap. “With the addition of DFW to our portfolio of company-controlled data centers, we are able to provide these bedrock corporations with sorely-needed data center space that can be tailored to their specific IT infrastructure needs – from colocation, managed hosting and cloudstorage services to premium connectivity and Content Delivery Network services – and can quickly scale to support their business growth requirements.”

Demand for colocation space in the DFW metroplex is expected to outpace supply through 2013, according to a recent report on multi-tenant data center supply from Tier1 Research. The new Dallas/Fort Worth facility is expected to open Phase I in the first quarter of 2012.

Internap’s data center services revenue for the full-year 2010 declined by 2 percent to $128.2 million, while dourth quarter data center services revenue was $31.7 million, down 4 percent compared with the fourth quarter of 2009.  The declines were related to Internap’s program to churn less profitable customer contracts in partner data center sites.

Internap reported revenues of $63.5 million in the fourth quarter of 2009, and this quarter should represent the last one being impacted by the pro-active churn in partner data centers that put a shadow on top line results in 2010, while strongly improving margins for the company.

As a reminder, in the third quarter of 2009 Internap’s CEO, Eric Cooney, started to proactively churn out approximately $5 million of low margin or loss making revenues generated at partner data centers, to concentrate all sales efforts on Internap’s managed facilities. The target of this initiative was to increase gross margins in the remaining partner sites to approximately 20 percent by the end of 2010, while the owned facilities already report margins of about 50 percent, in line with competition.

This program was on track for completion in the fourth quarter of 2010, and for this reason analysts expect the company to return to growth in 2011, and estimate revenues in excess of $ 254 million, or a 3.9 percent increase on expected 2010 results. Guidance for 2011 will be key for investors.

In our attached interactive spreadsheet, which you can also download at this link, we examined some of the key metrics that will be under analysts’ scrutiny this quarter – revenues, including revenues per segment, adjusted EBITDA, and customer and partner data center count, which have both been declining in the last few quarters.