Internap Names New President and CEO

Internap Network Services (INAP) has made a leadership change, hiring digital video veteran Eric Cooney as president and chief executive officer. Cooney will take over on March 16, replacing James DeBlasio, who has resigned but will continue his duties until Cooney arrives. DeBlasio had been president and CEO of Internap since 2005.

Cooney was most recently president and chief executive officer of Tandberg Television, part of the Ericsson Group. Internap board chairman Gene Eidenberg cited Cooney’s experience in the technology industry and “proven track record of increasing shareholder value.”

“His leadership and management skills, combined with his hands-on operational experience in a publicly traded company, are the ideal combination to improve shareholder value and restore investor confidence at Internap,” said Eidenberg.

That confidence has been battered over the past year after Internap botched the integration of the former VitalStream content delivery network, which it purchased in 2007 for $217 million. In March 2008 the company lowered its revenue guidance to reflect the impact of outages on the VitalStream network. In October Internap took a $100 million charge to reflect the decreased value of its CDN business.

i/o Data Centers Expands With Phoenix Site

i/o Data Centers has purchased this 530,000 square foot building in Phoenix.

i/o Data Centers has leased a huge, power-rich industrial building in Phoenix and plans to convert the facility into a data center, the company said today. At a time when data center construction has been sharply curtailed by the credit crisis, i/o Data Centers said its “Phoenix ONE” project is fully funded following a $56 million equity investment last month by Sterling Partners.

The 530,000 square foot facility near Sky Harbor Airport was built in 2005 to house the bottling operations of LeNature’s Beverages, which never fully occupied the building before filing for bankruptcy. i/o Data Centers has signed a 20-year lease with landlord CBRE Investors, and plans to use the site as both a data center and its corporate headquarters.

The 31-acre campus currently has 40 megawatts of power and an on-site substation, and i/o Data Centers says it will eventually expand capacity to 120 megawatts. Six fiber providers have committed to providing connectivity for the building, which is adjacent to a major fiber trench. 

“Our customers need scalable power and space to support their IT operations, and we help them do it in a capital-efficient way,” said i/o Data Centers’ President, Anthony Wanger. “Even though the economy is slow, the demand for high quality data center power has continued to be strong. Our customers need to grow their IT operations and we help them do it. We have constructed a well-capitalized, profitable business and will continue to grow with our new and current client base.”

Capital Strength a Priority for i/o Data Centers

The way Tony Wanger sees it, financial strength is part of data center reliability, and capital can become a single point of failure. 

Wanger, the co-founder and President of i/o Data Centers, says the company’s investor relationships and approach to capital management have paid off, positioning it to plan new data center projects while other companies are reining in their expansion ambitions.

i/o Data Centers announced yesterday that it has received $56 million in equity financing from Sterling Partners. ”Some of the key folks at Sterling know us very well, and know our track record,” said Wanger. “We’ve had a very good fall, and we need to expand. We are firing on all cylinders. ”

The company is nearing capacity on its first project, a 125,000 square foot data center in Scottsdale, Arizona. Wanger said that i/o is planning a second facility in the Phoenix area, and looking for expansion opportunities in several new markets.

i/o Data Centers Gets $56 Million in Funding

Data center developer i/o Data Centers has received $56 million in financing from private equity firm Sterling Partners, and will use the money to expand its data center infrastructure. i/o Data Centers is based in Scottsdale, Ariz., the site of its first facility.

The equity investment by Sterling Partners positions i/o Data Centers to expand when other data center builders are suspending construction due to financing challenges or slowing the pace of their project schedules. Sterling believes that provides an opportunity.

“The continued high demand for data center services is not being met by existing supply or by existing service providers,” said Sterling Partners Principal Shoshana Vernick. “i/o Data Centers is well positioned to lead this next wave of data center expansion.”

FirstBank Chooses i/o Data Centers

Colocation provider i/o Data Centers will design, build and operate a financial grade data center for FirstBank, the largest locally-owned bank in Colorado, the companies said Wednesday. FirstBank will occupy a custom suite in i/o Data Centers’ Scottsdale ONE data center facility as part of a multi-year agreement. The i/o site will serve as a disaster recovery facility for FirstBank, which currently has over 120 locations and serves more than 600,000 customers.

“With online banking becoming so prevalent in today’s society, FirstBank, as well as its customers, can have peace of mind knowing that their core IT is housed in a secure and reliable data center,” said Anthony Wanger, Senior Managing Director of i/o Data Centers. “We are committed to FirstBank and are pleased to have the opportunity to accommodate and assist them with their rapid growth and success by providing them with best-in-class data center space.”

i/o Data Centers Completes SAS 70 Audit

i/o Data Centers has completed the American Institute of Certified Public Accounts (AICPA) Statement on Auditing Standards No. 70 (SAS 70) Type II examination for its data center in Scottsdale, Arizona. The audit results were announced yesterday by CrystalTech Web Hosting, a large hosting provider that houses its servers with i/o in Scottsdale.

The SAS 70 Type II audit is a rigorous third-party evaluation of internal procedures, policies, and controls in accordance to the standards set by the AICPA. The completion of this audit, which was performed by independent service auditor Deloitte & Touche LLP, provides assurances that Newtek Technology Services’ data center space has the necessary controls in place to effectively manage and protect customer data.

i/o Data Centers Lines Up Generators

i/o Data Centers said today that it has reached an agreement with Empire Power Systems, the Caterpillar distributor for Arizona and Southeast California to ensure that it will have backup power for the build-out of its data centers. That will include 16 megawatts of backup power for i/o Data Centers’ Scottsdale ONE facility, all supplied by Caterpillar.

“The Caterpillar name implies quality,” said Tony Wanger, Senior Managing Director of i/o Data Centers. “Cat has a reputation as being a premium product in this market, and that matches up well with our desire to create a high level of confidence in our ability to host our client’s most important information. In the arrangement with Empire, we get the highest quality of product and we also have access to the capabilities of a very large Caterpillar distributor.”

Strong demand for diesel generators from data center builders and growing economies in China and India have contributed to a delivery backlog for large generators, with backlogs approaching a year for some larger models. Many new data centers are arranging for large volumes of power, which places additional pressure on manufacturing capacity. DuPont Fabros has 32 generators at its new facility in Ashburn, Virginia, while Google has received permits for up to 38 generators for its new data center in Council Bluffs, Iowa. With that level of demand, procuring generators becomes a key element of the data center construction timetable.

Major Qwest Contract with i/o Data Centers

Qwest Communications (Q) has announced a multimillion-dollar agreement with i/o Data Centers to create a custom telecommunications solution for i/o Data Centers’ Scottsdale ONE facility. i/o said it chose Qwest because it provides an “exceptionally robust solution” for large bandwidth needs and could work within the company’s design specifications. Scottsdale ONE is the first facility for i/o Data Centers, which plans to build a national data center network.

“This agreement shows how Qwest is willing to go above and beyond for customers such as i/o Data Centers who have mega bandwidth needs,” said Chris Ancell, vice president of sales, Qwest Business Markets group. “Qwest now provides high-capacity network services for many of the top Fortune 500 companies in the nation. And now, other businesses in Arizona can take advantage of the mega bandwidth available in the i/o Data Center.”