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NY Times Magazine Spotlights Data Centers
June 11th, 2009 : Rich MillerThis Sunday’s New York Times Magazine will include a feature article about the growing importance of data centers, which has been posted to the Times web site. “As data centers increasingly become the nerve centers of business and society — even the storehouses of our fleeting cultural memory (that dancing cockatoo on YouTube!) — the demand for bigger and better ones increases: there is a growing need to produce the most computing power per square foot at the lowest possible cost in energy and resources,” writes Tom Vanderbilt. “All of which is bringing a new level of attention, and challenges, to a once rather hidden phenomenon.”
The story quotes industry executives including Mike Manos (Microsoft/Digital Realty), Debra Chrapaty (Microsoft), Jonathan Heiliger (Facebook), Chris Crosby (Digital Realty Trust), Ken Brill (Uptime Institute), Bryan Doerr and Varghese Thomas (both of Savvis), Jonathan Koomey (Lawrence Berkeley Labs) and also some guy who writes a web site about data centers.
A nice touch: author Vanderbilt itemizes the web services he uses, and all the data centers in different places that are storing or managing the data he relies upon every day. There’s also a slide show with photos from Microsoft’s Quincy, Washington data center (including the clearly marked EPO button) and the Savvis data center in Weehawken.
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Financial Data Center, Hiding in Plain Sight
May 4th, 2009 : Rich MillerIt’s hard to keep a secret nowadays, and enormous data center projects are hard to hide. That’s a dilemma for financial data centers housing some of the nation’s most sensitive data. This week the Record published a story about the New York Stock Exchange’s plans for a 398,000 square foot data center in northern New Jersey.
When the newspaper began calling about the data center, NYSE Euronext, site owner and builder Russo Development and contractor Structure Tone all declined comment. But the paper uncovered references to the identity of the data center’s operator in SEC filings and local planning documents.
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Cervalis Leases NJ Site for Data Center
April 6th, 2009 : AdminManaged hosting provider Cervalis LLC has leased space in northern New Jersey to expand its growing disaster recovery business. The company recently signed a long-term lease with Russo Development for a 148,191building in Totowa, N.J., which will house more than 50,000 square feet of data center space for Cervalis clients.
The data center is Cervalis’ first facility in New Jersey, and will expand the company’s footprint to more than 280,000 square feet of space, with additional facilities in Wappingers Falls, N.Y. and Stamford, Ct.
“Russo Development has provided us with an excellent platform from which we can create a data center and work recovery center to Cervalis’ exacting specifications” said Chief Executive Officer, Michael Boccardi. “With our experience constructing our New York and Connecticut facilities, we can fit out this new facility as a state of the art center to serve clients in New Jersey as well as offering our clients complete production and backup facilities throughout the tri-state region.”
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CRG West, Telx Building Business in NYC
February 4th, 2009 : Rich MillerThere’s plenty of activity in the New York area data center market, as evidenced by this week’s announcements from CRG West and Telx.
- Colocation specialist CRG West announced that enterprise hosting specialist LogicWorks has moved into 2,400 square feet of space at its data center at 32 Avenue of the Americas in Manhattan. ”Our clients rely on Logicworks to design and support fully fault-tolerant infrastructures for maximum availability,” said Kenneth Ziegler, President and COO of Logicworks. “We’re only as good as the physical infrastructure in which these systems reside, and our expansion into CRG West’s facility meets our stringent requirements for quality design and rigorous controls and operating procedures.” CRG West’s 50,000 square foot data center opened last year (see our video tour of the facility).
- Interconnection and colo provider Telx has chosen to link its New York and New Jersey-based data centers with dark fiber. The new AboveNet dark fiber optical network connects Telx’s four primary New York metro area data centers at 111 8th Avenue and 60 Hudson Street in New York, 300 Boulevard East in Weehawken, N.J, and 100 Delawanna Avenue in Clifton, N.J., using diverse fiber routes with two separate Hudson River crossings. “Physical path diversity was a critical design element of the network to ensure the highest reliability for customers, especially those working in top-tier financial services where there is zero tolerance for network interruption,” said Mike Terlizzi Executive Vice President Engineering and Operations, of Telx.
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Data Center Projects Buoy NJ Market
January 13th, 2009 : Rich Miller
Telx and Automated Logic leased space in the Mountain Tech Center in Clifton, NJ.
Data center leasing deals helped the New Jersey office market remain stable in 2008, according to data from Colliers Houston & Co., which showed the state’s vacancy rate remaining stable at about 13 percent.
The last several months of 2008 saw an uptick in leases by data center tenants, including several substantial deals at the Mountain Technology Center in Clifton, where both Telx and Automated Logic leased space.
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Reports: Citigroup May Seek Merger or Sale
November 21st, 2008 : Rich MillerCNBC and the Wall Street Journal are reporting that Citigroup (C) may seek a merger, sell assets or even consider an outright sale of the company. The reports follow a two-day selloff that has seen shares of the huge banking company slide to less than $5 a share.
The Wall Street Journal has details on behind the scenes activity at Citigroup as the bank’s leadership shifts into crisis control mode:
Citigroup’s board of directors is scheduled to have a formal meeting Friday to discuss the options, according to people familiar with the situation. Directors also have been talking by phone about what could be done to reverse the stock’s slide. Top executives were locked in meetings Thursday to hash out a stabilization strategy. Chief Executive Vikram Pandit scheduled a conference call for 8 a.m. Friday to discuss the situation with senior managers.
Obviously more to come on this story. Beyond the significance of Citigroup to the markets and credit system, the company is a major data center builder, having just opened a $450 million facility near Austin, Texas.
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Wells Fargo, Not Citigroup, to Buy Wachovia
October 3rd, 2008 : Rich MillerRemember that deal for Citigroup to buy Wachovia? Never mind. Instead of selling its banking operations to Citigoup with government asssistance, Wachovia has opted for a deal with Wells Fargo, which will buy all of Wachovia for $15 billion in stock. Wells Fargo will sell $20 billion in stock to help fund the deal.
So now Wells Fargo gets the Wachovia IT and data center assets we discussed earlier, including a $400 million data center in Birmingham, Alabama and two facilities in Winston-Salem, N.C.
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$330 Million for Lehman’s Two NJ Data Centers
September 22nd, 2008 : Rich MillerBarclays will pay $330 million for two Lehman Brothers data centers it is acquiring as part of a larger deal to purchase assets of the bankrupt investment bank. The two data centers are both located in New Jersey, in Piscataway and Cranford.
The valuation emerged from a bankruptcy court hearing in which the purchase price for the real estate components of the deal were adjusted to $1.29 billion, including $960 million for Lehman’s New York headquarters and $330 million for the data centers. Lehman’s original estimate valued its headquarters at $1.02 billion but an appraisal this week valued it at $900 million.
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