• CoSentry selects Packet Power to monitor energy consumption. Midwest data center and colocation provider CoSentry announced that it has selected Packet Power to monitor data center power consumption. ”We chose Packet Power because of the low capital outlay and less intrusive installation – the implementation was as simple as connecting the Packet Power cables to the devices we wanted to monitor and that’s it,” said Brian Driscoll, Site Manager at CoSentry. Packet Power is a startup offering detailed electrical power consumption data for analysis. CoSentry operates data centers in Omaha, Kansas City and Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
• Interxion selected by Stardoll. European data center operator Interxion announced that they have been selected by Stardoll, to house equipment in its Stockholm data center. Stardoll is the world’s largest paper doll site and the company needed additional capacity to support continued expansion. Interxion has an extensive European footprint with 24 data centers in 11 countries.
• Savvis considering hybrid cloud for capital markets. IT Services company Savvis is reported to be considering a hybrid cloud solution for their capital markets customers. In July Savvis announced plans for a major expansion in New Jersey, and a week ago they previewed their next generation cloud offering. The financial sector is the largest vertical for Savvis and the idea is to give a private grid infrastructure for applications hosted at Savvis to their investment banks and hedge funds customers to share. The tough sell is to prove the security and exclusivity of the cloud solution to just customers in the capital markets.

• AdaptivCool HotSpotr floor tiles. Greentechmedia.com has an article on AdaptivCool’s HotSpotr HT-500 line of underfloor air movers. The floor tiles contain fans and are linked to temperature controls to then distribute just the right amount of cooling. ”Those fan-and-sensor enabled tiles blow the cold air into places where servers are running hot, and ignore places where servers aren’t generating that much heat,” said CTO Rajesh Nair. AdaptivCool also makes sensor-enabled roof units.  AdaptivCool recently partnered with Massachutes based Electronic Environments to resell AdaptivCool data center cooling solutions.
• New Rittal UL Type 12 Network Enclosure. Industrial and data center products company Rittal Corporation announced a new line of UL Type 12 network enclosures. The Rittal Type 12 rated TS8 enclosures draw on their experience in both industrial and IT solutions and provide the protection of industrial enclosures along with the flexibility and performance of their IT enclosures. The enclosures have a 3,200 lb. load capacity and multiple points for mounting, depth-adjustable 19 inch rails, internal hinges and locking points, and many other features. UL type 12 referrs to Underwriters Laboratories Inc specifications for enclosures for electrical equipment. Type 12 enclosures are described as “Indoor use to provide a degree of protection against dust, dirt, fiber flaying, dripping water, and external condensation of non corrosive liquids.”

The new facility in Lenexa complement two data centers in its home base of Sacramento, Calif. and offers expanded disaster recovery options for businesses in both markets. SureWest converted existing space in its Lenexa facility for data center use.

“The new Kansas City data center helps address the existing demand among local
businesses for disaster recovery and business continuity efforts,” said Ed
Butler, SureWest’s executive director of commercial sales. “Our customers will
now be able to take advantage of, and protect their networks with the very
same infrastructure and environmental protections that we have in place to
secure our own enterprise network.”

Todd Applegate, Business Development Manager at 1102 Grand, said the expansion was driven by demand from existing tenants. “We have listened to service providers and enterprise customers who are significantly driving the demand for colocation services in our facility,” said Applegate. “By being connected to our carrier neutral Meet Me Room, customers in these new colocation areas will benefit from being a cross-connect away from a wide array of carrier networks. Since we serve such a diverse group of customers from as far away as Europe, it is exciting to see what can happen when companies utilize our Meet Me Room to do business together.”

The building’s owners have invested nearly $7 million since purchasing the building four years ago. Previous improvements included the connection to two Kansas City Power & Light power grids, completely replacing the entire primary electrical infrastructure, installing redundant cooling towers, and developing a carrier neutral Meet Me Room.

“We did more than remodel the building,” said Applegate. “We have worked together with our tenants to reinvent the facility, and these current expansions are a testament to our ongoing commitment in developing the area’s largest neutral hub for the internet and attracting global customers to Kansas City.”

1102 Grand’s Meet Me Room houses major carriers providing service in Kansas City, including AT&T, Cox Communication, Level 3, Time Warner Cable, Qwest, and Verizon Business.

“We are delighted to host PaySpot in our facility,” said Todd Applegate, Business Development Manger at 1102 GRAND. “Our building along with our core infrastructure, positioned directly on Kansas City’s major metropolitan fiber ring, provides global network operators and enterprise companies the ability to securely host their networking equipment and mission critical applications.”

1102 Grand is a 26 story high-rise in Kansas City’s financial district sitting on dual power grids in a major metropolitan fiber ring. The owners of the 155,000 square foot building recently invested more than $6.5 million in infrastructure upgrades to the facility.

1103 Grand is part of the Carrier Hotels Alliance, a cooperative effort of North America’s largest operators of carrier hotels (multi-tenant telecom buildings), including CRG West, the Westin Building of Seattle and the Telx network of Meet Me Rooms in a dozen major Internet gateways across the US, including 60 Hudson and 111 Eighth Avenue in New York.

“These new customers will now benefit from QualityTech’s fully-managed services and technology solutions,” said Mark Waddington, President of QualityTech. “Our robust connectivity, power and cooling density are just a few of the many reasons we’re a leader in the industry. Our highly-experienced team has the ability to tailor collocation services for businesses in need of scalable space and bandwidth, to give our clients peace of mind.”

The acquisition increases QualityTech’s presence in the Midwest, and brings the company’s contracted annual revenue above the $100 million mark. QualityTech currently manages and operates more than 2 million square feet of data centers, which the company says has a market value in excess of $500 million.

“We’re looking to grow and expand into other areas of the country,” said Waddington. “This acquisition was the perfect opportunity for us to move in that direction.”

QualityTech recently opened the 200,000 square foot first phase of its QualityTech Metro Data Center in Atlanta. QualityTech purchased the 990,000 square foot data center from MetroNexus in October 2006 to grow its national footprint of data centers and to meet the growing demand for data center space from corporate customers. The company also has 168,000 square feet of finished data center space in a second huge data center in Suwannee, Georgia, which it bought from ITC^DeltaCom for $25 million in 2005.

QualityTech, which is privately held, us part of the Quality Group in Overland Park, Kansas, a suburb of Kansas City. In 2003 the company started acquiring data centers in the Kansas City area and Wichita, Kansas, and Indianapolis, Indiana. In 2006 QualityTech purchased the customers of Globix, along with a facility in Santa Clara, California. In late 2006 the company bought NTT USA LLC in a deal that included a 130,000 square foot data center in Jersey City, New Jersey.

The CHA is a cooperative effort of North America’s largest operators of carrier hotels (multi-tenant telecom buildings), including CRG West (One Wilshire and San Jose’s Marketplace Tower), the Westin Building of Seattle and the telx Group network of meet-me rooms in a dozen major Internet gateways across the US, including 60 Hudson and 111 Eighth Avenue in New York.

The CHA offers prospective customers the opportunity to “build their entire North American network in one room” at major telecom industry conferences. “It’s a win-win situation for GTM attendees,” commented Michael Boyle, Director of Business Development for the Westin Building. “The combination of international network operators, equipment manufacturers, and facility owners in the CHA allows attendees to buy and build the necessary infrastructure for the next phase of telecommunications growth.”

1102 Grand is a 26 story high-rise in Kansas City’s financial district sitting on dual power grids in a major metropolitan fiber ring. The owners of the 155,000 square foot building recently invested more than $6.5 million in infrastructure upgrades to the facility.

“We are thrilled to join CRG West, tel(x), and The Westin Building in this important alliance,” said Darren Bonawitz, Partner at 1102 GRAND. “Carrier hotels play a vital role in enabling exchange among next generation networks and services, and banding together with the common goal of enabling network- building increases the power of that position exponentially.”

Cerner is the latest company to build in Kansas City, a market that illustrates the “clustering effect” for data centers discussed in our article last week on the Boyd Company’s data center site location research. Kansas City is home to data center facilities from MasterCard, Liberty Lexis/Nexis, Ameritrade, Quality Technologies, IDC Global, 1&1 Internet and many others. It has benefited from a strong availability of fiber and power, as well as a supportive local economic development community that was among the earliest second-tier cities to market its suitability for data centers.

According to Kansas City press reports, Cerner is seeking up to $80 million in revenue bonds for the financing of a new data center and office building. The Kansas City Council’s Finance and Audit Committee have recommended the approval of the bonds for the project at the corner of 33rd Terrace and Chouteau Trafficway in Kansas City, North.

Construction on the complex, which will serve as a back-up for Cerner’s Lee Summit data center, began in Spring 2006. Completion is scheduled for this summer.

According to the Kansas City Star, the bonds, known as Chapter 100 bonds, would be repaid by Cerner through a lease agreement with the city. The city would have no obligation to repay the bonds and they would not appear on the city’s debt statement. The deal includes property and sales tax abatements.