Roundup: CoSentry, Tata Communications, nlyte, SGI

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

CoSentry opens Nebraska data center. Data center and managed services provider CoSentry announced the opening of The Midlands, their fourth data center, in Papillion, Nebraska.  An opening ceremony for the 68,000 square foot facility was held January 21. Designed by Morrissey Engineering, the facility addresses dual power grids, energy efficient cooling and LEED standards. “These data centers must balance extreme density computing environments with the economic requirements to be as energy efficient as possible,” said CoSentry president and CEO Mike Steffan. “They also are designed to meet business performance goals which require the resiliency to withstand the region’s most extreme weather conditions and power disruptions.”  CoSentry operates data centers in Omaha, Kansas City and Sioux Falls.

Tata Communications unveils largest Indian data center. Tata Communications announced the availability of a 55,000 square foot data center in Pune, India.  Residing on the Tata Tier-1 IP backbone, the facility will offer colocation, managed hosting and storage, and security and CDN services. With over 1 million square feet of data center space across 42 facilities worldwide, Tata Communications is the largest player in the data center business in India.

RACK Becomes SGI on Ticker

Rackable Systems said today that it has completed its legal name change to “Silicon Graphics International Corp.” and will also change its NASDAQ stock ticker symbol from RACK to SGI, effective today. There had been initial reports that the company would continue to trade under RACK. Please update your portfolios accordingly.

“Leveraging a unified SGI brand will enable us to communicate more effectively to our customers and partners around the globe,” Mark Barrenechea, president and CEO of SGI. “Implementing the new trading symbol better aligns our corporate brand with our vision.”

Rackable Will Rebrand as SGI

The logo for the new SGI, formerly known as Rackable Systems.

Rackable Systems (RACK) has completed its acquisition of the former Silicon Graphics Inc. and will adopt SGI as its new name, the company said today. The decision by Rackable management to adopt the SGI moniker is a sign that it believes that the Silicon Graphics name still has mojo in the marketplace.

Rackable Systems president and CEO Mark Barrenechea will hold the same positions in the “new” SGI, and the Rackable Systems board of directors remains unchanged. The company will continue to use RACK as its stock symbol. Rackable got clearance from bankruptcy court on April 30 to acquire the assets of Silicon Graphics for $42.5 million in cash, and closed the transaction on May 8.

Silicon Graphics was founded in 1981 and gained prominence in supercomputing and 3D graphics. SGI machines were used to create special effects in numerous Hollywood spectacles in the 1990s, making on-screen appearances in Jurassic Park and Twister (See the SGIstuff site for more details).

Court Approves Rackable-SGI Deal

Rackable Systems(RACK) has received court approval to acquire substantially all of the assets of Silicon Graphics, Inc. (SGI) for $42.5 million in cash, plus the assumption of some of SGI’s liabilities. That’s higher than the $25 million purchase price when the deal was announced on April 1. The amended asset purchase agreement was approved yesterday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York, and the deal is expected to be completed by May 8, subject to closing conditions.

“We are pleased with today’s news,” said Mark J. Barrenechea, president and CEO of Rackable Systems. “With this acquisition, Rackable will be positioned to solve the most demanding business and technology challenges our customers confront today. We believe we will have a stronger company with differentiated product lines and professional services; reaching commercial, government and scientific sectors on a worldwide basis.”

Demo: How CloudRack Optimizes Energy Use

Server vendor Rackable Systems recently introduced its CloudRack C2, a rack system optimized for low energy use that can operate safely at temperatures up to 100 degrees in the data center hot aisle. The CloudRack C2 employs cabinet-level power distribution technology and fans in the rear of the enclosure, enabling server trays that contain no fans or power supplies. In this video from Uptime Symposium 2009, Rackable Vice President of Marketing George Skaff and Systems Engineering Manager Lior Paster provide an overview of the problems the CloudRack C2 is designed to address. This video runs about 7 minutes.

Check out our Rackable Channel for more on this topic. For additional video, visit our DCK video archive and the Data Center Videos channel on YouTube.

Rackable Buys SGI in Chapter 11 Deal

Rackable Systems (RACK) will buy Silicon Graphics, Inc. (SGIC) in a pre-packaged bankruptcy deal designed to boost the company’s position in the high-performance computing market. Silicon Graphics will file for Chapter 11 today, and has agreed to sell most of its assets to Rackable for $25 million in cash. Rackable will also assume some of SGI’s liabilities.

The Rackable offer works out to about 47 cents a share, a 15 percent premium to Silicon Graphics’ closing price Tuesday. The deal is for “substantially all” of SGI’s assets, the companies said. Acquiring a company through bankruptcy allows a buyer to be selective about which assets it acquires, and which debts it assumes.

“Together, we believe we will be a much stronger entity with great products and people offering a compelling proposition to compete more effectively in, and across, our collective markets,” said Mark J. Barrenechea, president and CEO of Rackable Systems. “The combined company will be positioned to solve the most demanding business and technology challenges our customers confront today.” Barrenechea said the deal also provides “the potential for significant operational synergies.”

Rackable CloudRack Turns Up The Heat

The server trays from the CloudRack C2 have no on-board fans or power supplies.

Are you ready for the 100-degree data center? Rackable Systems has introduced a new version of its CloudRack enclosure that it says can operate in environments as hot as 104 degrees, offering customers the option of saving energy costs by raising the temperature in their data center. The new CloudRack C2 is Rackable’s latest effort to combine higher density and lower power usage by shifting components out of the server tray and into the enclosure.

The C2 introduces cabinet-level power distribution technology, using rectifiers to convert AC power to 12V DC power. This innovation, combined with the cabinet-level fans introduced in the initial CloudRack, mean that the server trays contain no fans or power supplies. Rackable says the CloudRack fans and rectifiers equate to an N+1 redundancy.

Rackable says the design innovations will allow data center operators to safely run server-packed CloudRacks at temperatures up to 40 degrees C, or 104 degrees Fahrenheit. Most data centers operate in a temperature range between 68 and 74 degrees, and some are as cold as 55 degrees.

“The CloudRack C2 is a landmark achievement,” said Mark Barrenechea, president and CEO of Rackable Systems (RACK). “Most notably, it solves the problem of stranded power. Data centers can now also reduce power consumption by simply turning up the thermostat while using CloudRack C2. It is the most energy-efficient and thermally-intelligent cabinet technology Rackable has ever offered.”

MyYearbook.com Picks Rackable Servers

The fast-growing social network MyYearbook.com will buy servers from Rackable Systems (RACK) to support its infrastructure expansion, the company said Tuesday. The site, which was founded by two New Jersey high school students, has more than 1.5 billion page views per month, according to ComScore.

To support that growth, MyYearbook.com will use Rackable’s 44U cabinets pre-packed with Rackable C1002 half-depth servers to support its web applications. “Rackable’s proven ability to ship a completely integrated data center solution, pre-racked and pre-wired, gave us an immediate competitive advantage; we saved more than 150 man-hours right there,” said Jeremy Stinson, vice president of Network Operations at MyYearbook. “Yet the overriding reason we chose Rackable servers to run almost 100 percent of our web tier is their extreme high density and low power consumption.”

Rackable: No Revenue from Containers in 2008

The interior of one of Rackable's ICE Cube containers.

In January 2008, executives at Rackable Systems (RACK) predicted that 2008 will be a “breakthrough year for containerized data centers” and projected that the company would deploy at least 20 of its ICE Cube portables by year-end, and perhaps as many as 50.

The reality was brutally different, as the company acknowledged yesterday. “Part of our disappointing news is that we haven’t recognized any revenue for the ICE Cube in 2008,” said Rackable CEO Mark Barrenechea, who cited delays in “large-scale data center construction projects.”

That’s clearly a reference to recent project delays by Microsoft, which has effectively halted work on its massive Chicago data center, which is positioned to become the world’s first major “container farm.” Microsoft had planned to use as many as 200 40-foot shipping containers pre-packed with servers.