Roundup: SGI, Level 3, Internap

Here’s a roundup of some of some of this week’s headlines from the data center and hosting industry:

SGI Selected by Institute of Cancer Research. SGI announced Tuesday that the Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) has selected SGI Altix UV with Intel processors to support its research. The SGI high performance computing (HPC) facility will provide ICR with a massively scalable shared memory system to process hundreds of terabytes of data across thousands of CPUs. The SGI Altix UV supports up to 16 terabytes of global shared memory in a single system image. ”Altix UV will meaningfully transform HPC by drawing on large memory capacity, high core count and scalability of our forthcoming next generation Intel Xeon processor-based server platform, for the expandable server segments (codenamed Nehalem-EX),” said Richard Dracott, general manager of high performance computing at Intel.

Level 3 delivers backbone for TDS Telecom. Level 3 announced that it will provide backbone network connectivity for TDS Telecommunications to support the recent deployment of their all-IP nationwide network.  “The Level 3 network enables TDS to deliver high-quality services to our end-user customers, while also providing operational and cost benefits for TDS to better manage our nationwide network,” said Ken Paker, Vice President Network Services at TDS.  A new 10 Gbps network architecture allows TDS to connect core locations with more than 25 10 Gbps wavelengths, provided by Level 3.  TDS is a Madison Wisconsin based company that is the eighth largest wireline phone company in the U.S.

Internap Provides CDN for Sundance Festival.  Internap Network Services (INAP) announced that they are an official provider of Content Delivery Network (CDN) services for the 2010 Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. Sundance will use the CDN to streamline the creation, delivery and management of interactive web content that promotes the event itself and the work of independent filmmakers year-round.  “Internap’s CDN allows us to easily create and share streaming video and other new types of content – an increasingly vital part of building awareness of our artists and bringing their work to a global audience – while ensuring a consistently reliable viewing experience, even during the dramatic spike in web traffic that occurs during the Sundance Film Festival,” said Joseph Beyer, associate director at Sundance Institute Online.

Roundup: SoftLayer, Power Loft, Level 3

Here’s a roundup of some of some of this week’s headlines from the data center and hosting industry:

• SoftLayer continues data center expansion. SoftLayer Technologies announced the opening of three new data center pods in the Dallas, Seattle and northern Virginia data centers.  The new pods add capacity for 20,000 additional servers, bringing total capacity to more than 45,000 servers. “These three new pods meet the customer demand increases that we expect in the very near future,” said Lance Crosby, CEO of SoftLayer. “And they are only preliminary measures in our growth strategy for 2010. We have some big plans which we can’t wait to share with everyone.”  SoftLayer has standardized on the pod architecture for data center design, allowing them to optimize space, power, network, personnel and internal infrastructure. The company recently announced that it was on track to report more than $80 million in revenue for 2009 and raised $20 million to fund the continued growth of the company.
• Power Loft opens Virginia Data Center: Power Loft LLC announced the substantial completion of their first data center, Power Loft @ Innovation. Located in Prince William County, Virginia, this 225,000 square foot facility has signed an international IT technology outsourcing company as its anchor tenant, and was recently awarded the first Northern Virginia Technology Council’s Green Award. “Power Loft is in the forefront of creating energy efficient data center space,” said Bobbie Kilberg, President & CEO of the Northern Virginia Technology Council (NVTC).  “Having our company singled out to receive the NVTC Green Award, turned four years of hard work into a very unexpected night of celebration for us all,” said Jim Coakley, CEO of Power Loft LLC. “We are very
  proud to be so honored and we commend the NVTC for elevating the visibility of the many companies in Northern
  Virginia who are making an increasingly positive impact on our environment.”
• Level 3 to support Clearwire’s 4G network. Level 3 Communications announced an expanded relationship with Clearwire Communications Tuesday to support their CLEAR 4G WiMax services.  The agreement provides Clearwire with network transport services as a part of their deployment of CLEAR WiMax services in major metropolitan markets across the United States. Level 3 will provide high speed connectivity to Chicago, Dallas, Philadelphia, Seattle, Washington D.C., Houston and the Bay area.   CLEAR 4G WiMax is a next generation mobile internet solution from Clearwire that claims to be 4 times faster than 3G.  Clearwire has been growing rapidly and in their third quarter 2009 results reported that 4G network coverage increased by 67% to over 10 million people.  They also recently had a $1.564 billion equity financing round. Is there a map for that? – you bet.

Roundup: IBM, NTT, SC09 demo, PhoenixNAP

Here’s a roundup of news announcements from the data center and hosting industry:

• Key milestone to 100 Gigabit Ethernet demonstrated. At the SC09 conference in Oregon Monday Infinera, Internet2, Juniper Networks and Level 3 demonstrated 100 Gbps data transport between Seattle and the SC09 show floor in Portland.  The 100 Gbps of test data was sent via a single slot on the Juniper T1600 Series Core Router, populated with a new 10×10GbE physical interface card and an Infinera optical system, over Level 3 and Internet2’s fiber-optic network.  An 802.3ba compliant 100GbE router interface was demonstrated by Juniper as well.  The demonstrations follow-up on an initiative announced at the SC08 conference last year between the same partners and the U.S. Department of Energy Sciences Network.  Kanalya Vasani, vice president of product management at Juniper said “with ‘Big Science’ projects like the Large Hadron Collider expected to be generating data flows of 100Gbps as soon as 2010, it’s clear that the world’s scientific research and education community needs to move beyond groups of 10Gbps waves and be ready with 100GbE solutions in the very near term.”
• IBM selected by LBNL for cloud research. Monday IBM announced that the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has selected an IBM System x iDataPlex server to run the Lab’s program to explore how cloud computing can be used to advance scientific discovery.  The LBNL program is being funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act through the Department of Energy and will allow scientists to accelerate discoveries in energy efficiency, climate change and genomics.  According to the August 2009 Green500 list, the iDatPlex system is one of the most energy efficient computers in the world.  It also will have the theoretical peak speed of more than 60 teraflops.
• NTT to Power OpSource Cloud: NTT America, the U.S. subsidiary of NTT Communications Corporation (NTT Com), and OpSource today announced their intention to accelerate the adoption of enterprise cloud computing by powering OpSource Cloud, which will use  NTT America’s secure data centers and Tier-1 global IP network. OpSource Cloud is designed to allow IT departments to manage their security as they would within their internal IT infrastructure. OpSource Cloud provides every user with a Virtual Private Cloud within the public cloud, allowing them to determine their own degree of Internet connectivity.

Roundup: Amazon, Hurricane Electric, Level 3

Here’s a roundup of news announcements from the data center and hosting industry:

• Amazon Web Services Asia Expansion.  Amazon Web Service announced Thursday that an expansion of their services into an Asia-Pacific region will take place in the first half of 2010, when developers and businesses will be able to access infrastructure services from multiple availability zones in Singapore, with other zones in Asia following in the second half of 2010.  AWS services included at launch will be Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), Amazon Simple Storage (S3), SimpleDB, Relational Database Service (RDS), Simple Queue Service (SQS), MapReduce and CloudFront.  Pricing for web services in Asia will be announced when launched in 2010.
• Hurricane Electric Expands Infrastructure at Equinix.  Internet backbone and IPv6 provider Hurricane Electric will extend its presence to additional Equinix data centers outside of the United States. Hurricane Electric will expand into Equinix Tokyo-2, Hong Kong-1 and Zurich-1 facilities.  Citing an increasing demand for IPv6 content in Asia and Europe as a reason for global expansion, the Hurricane Electric presence in global Equinix data centers will also allow other Equinix customers to easily exchange IP traffic with more than 500 associated IPv6 backbones.  Equinix chief marketing officer Jarrett Appleby said “operating also within our TY2, HK1 and ZH1 centers will put Hurricane Electric in the middle of an existing community of international and local networks and carriers for its next generation IP access service.”
• Level 3 expands in Atlanta. Level 3 announced Thursday an expansion of operations and enhancing local presence in the Atlanta area.  The initiative will provide mid-market enterprises with greater access to Level 3’s services via its extensive backbone network, metro fiber-optic footprint, and a locally focused sales and customer support team.  Level 3 will expand the network in the Atlanta area that already passes nearly 15,000 businesses today.  Following their “link globally and connect locally” mantra, the move will allow Level 3 to provide a competitive alternative for Atlanta area businesses.  Level 3 has announced similar focused expansions in Chicago, Miami and New York in recent months.

Roundup: Level 3, Akamai, Liebert

Here’s a roundup of news announcements from the data center and hosting industry:

• Akamai Reports Third Quarter 2009 Results. Wednesday Akamai released financial results for the period ending September 30, 2009.  Revenue was up 5% year over year at $206.5 million and cash flow from operations up 13% year over year at $105.2 million. “Our results demonstrated our ability to leverage the Company’s unique cost structure and scale while improving performance and reliability for our enterprise-class customers,” said CEO Paul Sagan. During the third quarter the company repurchased approximately 2 million shares of common stock for $36.2 million at an average price of $18.41 per share.  Customers with recurring contracts at the end of the third quarter increased to a record 3,031; an 8% increase year over year.  It was also reported that Akamai is conducting an internal probe on insider trading after an unnamed executive was implicated in a massive insider trading scandal.  No Akamai official has yet been named or charged in the case.
• New Next Generation Data Wales facility. European data center specialist Next Generation Data announced the opening of a $326 million data center in Wales, U.K. Known as NGD Europe, it is the largest of its kind in the U.K. and one of the largest in Europe. The 700,000 square foot space was formerly a semiconductor plant and can be divided into multiple areas for individual clients. Several blue-chip companies have signed long-term contracts and Next Generation Data is offering a range of wholesale space-only contracts to large companies. NGD Europe has numerous security features, such as prison grade perimeter fencing, biometric recognition and ex-special forces security guards, bomb-proof glass and triple-skinned walls.

The Emerging Market for Wireless Backhaul

Last Thursday Level 3 launched a wireless tower access service offering wireless tower operators direct connectivity to the Level 3 backbone, which would provide cost-effective options for wireless backhaul in metropolitan and rural locations. This is a growth market, according to analysts like Jennifer Pigg from the Yankee Group, who says mobile operators are scrambling to meet capacity demand and predicts that mobile data traffic will grow by an order of magnitude in the coming years. 

The towers are located in rural areas and offer voice, data and Internet services as an alternative to incumbent providers. Level 3 also offers shared infrastructure to allow wireless carriers to expand without building their own towers. 

Wireless data networks have been an increasingly hot market in recent months, according to Visiant Strategies, which examined the market in a report titled US Mobile Backhaul 2010: Continued Expansion 2009 to 2015. ”All wireless carriers in the United States are continuing to ramp up their networks with technologies that allow much greater capacity and the use of much more capacity per user, mainly a result of meaningful wireless data applications and devices, and this means much more backhaul capacity will be needed,” wrote Andy Fuertes of Visiant Strategies.

Roundup: Telco rumors, Ingram Micro, CBTS

Here’s a roundup of some of some of this week’s headlines from the data center and hosting industry:

• Telecom acquisition rumors. Separate reports recently show Deutsche Telecom thinking about purchasing Sprint Nextel and Seeking Alpha revisits the rumor about Google buying Level3.  Marketwatch reports that German telecommunications giant and T-Mobile parent Deutsche Telecom might bid for Sprint Nextel within the next few weeks.   The Telecom Ramblings blog sums up the Google/Level3 rumor nicely as “baseless yet immortal rumor”.  Both Google and Level3 stocks were up Monday.
• Cincinnati Bell opens new Ohio data center. Wholly owned subsidiary of Cincinnati Bell CBTS announced Monday that they have opened a new facility in Lebanon, Ohio.  The 50,000 square foot data center will offer colocation, disaster recovery and managed services.  The Lebanon facility will be connected to the CBTS DWDM network and five other facilities in the Cincinnati area.  CBTS is providing premier data center services to Fortune 1000 companies in 25,000 square foot of space and an additional 25,000 square foot is ready to receive additional customers.
• Ingram Micro unveils Australian data center. Distribution giant Ingram Micro announced Monday that it opened an AUS$6 million data center in Sydney.  The facility, branded as the Partner Technology Centre will help Ingram demonstrate partner solutions and is backed by 12 suppliers.  Equipment on show at the site will come from Avocent, APC, Brocade, Cisco, EMC, Fortinet, HP, HP ProCurve, IBM, Microsoft, Symantec and VMware.  The Sydney facility is based on green datacentre practices and will undergo certification through Carbon Planet.

Renesys: Level 3 Now Largest IP Network

What company has the world’s largest network? Strong growth in November and December has lifted Level 3 Communications (LVLT) past Sprint and into the top spot, according to Internet routing specialist Renesys, which has published data on the 13 largest network providers. Regional growth trends loom large in the shifts seen in the network ecosystem in 2008, according to the Renesys analysis.

“It’s pretty clear from this narrative that the providers who are moving up in the rankings are doing so thanks in large measure to Asia,” writes Earl Zmijewski of Renesys. “This should come as no surprise. With more than half the world’s population and only 15% of them online, it’s pretty clear there is enormous potential here.” See the Renesys blog for the full story.

Level 3 Will Cut 450 Jobs

The job news has been pretty brutal of late, and Level 3 Communications (LVLT) is the latest company to announce layoffs. The Denver-based  telecom and content delivery provider will cut 450 jobs, or about 8 percent of its workforce. The company said the cuts would occur before the end of the year and be made “across multiple levels in the organization and multiple locations in North America only.”

Level 3 will take a restructuring charge of $12 million to $15 million in the fourth quarter 2008. For more analysis, see the summary at Telecom Ramblings.