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Regional Roundup: Indiana, Michigan, DFW
December 11th, 2009 : John RathHere is a roundup of some regional data center news around the United States:
- Midwest ISO seeks new home for backup data site. Major power consortium Midwest ISO is looking for a new home for their $35 million backup data site after the Boone County (Indiana) Commissioners voted down their rezoning request for land. Due to a stipulation from the Department of Homeland Security, Midwest ISO was looking to build its 17-acre, $35 million data center in a rural area, away from major highways, railways and airports. This is the second time they have been turned down in Boone county. Ten years ago they were turned down when they wanted to build a headquarters near Zionsville. Midwest ISO recently announced expansion of their headquarters in Carmel, Indiana; investing around $110 million to upgrade computer equipment and adding 70 jobs over the next five years.
- Growth in Michigan for Online Tech. CEO of Ann Arbor-based Online Technologies Yan Ness credits the cold Michigan temperatures for the continued growth of his business. Online Tech has three data centers - a 30,500 square foot facility in Genesee County, 10,500 square feet south of Ann Arbor in Avis Park and the newest facility, 5,000 square feet in down town Ann Arbor. Recently Online Tech won an Ann Arbor SPARK’s Fast Track award for a fourth consecutive year. The award honors companies that maintain average annual revenue growth of 20% for three consecutive years.
- Texas data center demand outpacing supply. Sheila Bellinger, VP and Southwest director of the Grub & Ellis National Data Center Group spoke at Datacenter Dynamics Dallas Thursday on the topic of supply and demand for data center space in the Dallas-ForthWorth area. Bellinger noted that about 1.5 million square feet of data center space was absorbed by the Dallas-FortWorth market over the past three years. Although power costs in the area are expensive, other factors such as fiber-optic infrastructure, favorable regulatory environment and low construction costs are what drives demand. Bellinger said that Texas is consuming more power than any other state in the U.S.
I am a little bit partial to this last story: Waterloo, Fastest (Internet) Town in the Midwest. Stacey Higginbotham from GigaOm reports on a local newspaper story about Waterloo Iowa having faster broadband than even the most wired cities. Mediacom selected Waterloo to (soon) have 105 Mbps cable Internet service on the downlink thanks to the town’s willingness to get involved in bringing better broadband to its residents.
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Roundup: Amazon, Hurricane Electric, Level 3
November 13th, 2009 : John RathHere’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.
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Oracle Halts Utah Data Center Project
July 8th, 2009 : Rich Miller
Oracle's planned Utah Compute Center in West Jordan, Utah. State officials say Oracle has halted construction on the project.
Oracle has halted construction on a $300 million data center project in West Jordan, Utah in a move that appears to be tied to the company’s pending acquisition of Sun Microsystems. The construction stoppage was reported this morning by the Salt Lake Tribune, with Utah economic development officials saying the company has “put it on hold for a little while” while waiting for the economy to rebound.
Oracle unveiled the West Jordan project last May, when company president Safra Catz said the new facility “will allow us to support our growing On Demand business, as well as the technology infrastructure to support our research and development and customer service requirement.” Oracle touted its Project Sequoia design at industry trade shows last summer, and broke ground in October.
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NSA Plans $1.6 Billion Utah Data Center
July 1st, 2009 : Rich MillerThe National Security Agency is planning to build a massive data center at Fort Williams in Utah, which could eventually include more than 1 million square feet of data center space, reports the Salt Lake Tribune.
The first phase of the project will feature an $800 million investment in a 35-megawatt data center, with a second $800 million, 35-megawatt phase to follow. The initial phase is currently in the design stage, with construction scheduled to begin in June 2010 and be completed by March 2013, according to documents (link via Mark Fontecchio). Project specs call for a Tier III raised-floor facility.
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Manitoba to Data Centers: No Thanks!
June 17th, 2009 : Rich MillerLast year we reported that a number of large data center builders were investigating Manitoba as a location for power-hungry server farms. With power costs driving many data center site location processes, and corporate mandates for “green” facilities, the central Canadian province’s ample supply of affordable hydro and wind power is attractive. In early 2008 Manitoba Hydro was approached by several name-brand data center builders.
Although data center companies are interested in Manitoba, it turns out Manitoba isn’t much interested in data centers. That’s the word from Manitoban blogger Rod Edwards. “I called the provincial department of Science, Technology, Energy and Mines (STEM), and had a very nice conversation with a representative who told me that Manitoba had, in fact, been contacted by a number of large datacenter investors, and that we had declined to compete for their investments,” Edwards reports.
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FedEx Expands Colorado Springs Data Center
June 11th, 2009 : Rich MillerFederal Express is building out unfinished space in its Colorado Springs data center, and adding an addition to boot, reports the Colorado Springs Gazette. The paper says FedEx is converting an unfinished 35,838-square-foot second floor of the FedEx data center into technical space, and also adding a 24,000 square foot expansion. The company is also adding five new generators to provide backup power for the expanded footprint.
“We are upgrading our existing information technology operation in Colorado Springs and expect the project to be completed in late 2010,” FedEx spokesman Jim McCluskey told the Gazette. “While we don’t disclose specific information about our information technology operations, we anticipate the facility will qualify for LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification once it is completed.”
FedEx began building the 113,000 square foot data center in 2007. The new building replaced a leased data center facility that was about half that size.
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What is ‘Project Bacon’?
June 8th, 2009 : Rich MillerWhat is “Project Bacon?” That’s the code name adopted by economic development Officials in Palm Beach County, Florida for a mystery company seeking a 50-acre site to build an office complex and data center. A project profile circulating among property owners describes a plan to build 740,000 square feet of office space between 2010 and 2015 to house 2,740 employees, along with a 50,000 square foot data center that will employ 150 workers.
County officials have presented about 15 or 20 large sites to the company, according to the Palm Beach Post. The paper’s blog added additional details of the project description:
- 2010: A 115,000-square-foot office building with 440 workers.
- 2011: A 50,000-square-foot data center with 150 workers.
- 2012: A 115,000-square-foot office building with 500 employees.
- 2012: A 60,000-square-foot “visitors center” with cafe, gym, health center and auditorium.
- 2013: A 225,000-square-foot office building for 900 workers.
- 2015: Another 225,000-square-foot office building for 900 workers.
Google, of course, is known for its use of code names when dealing with local officials. But they’re far from the only company to follow this practice, and the ratio of office-to-data center space doesn’t scream “Internet company.” The visitor’s center may narrow the range of possibiltiies.
Who’s the mystery company? We’ll keep tracking this one. But it’s interesting to see another large economic development project on the heels of recent site searches by Yahoo and Apple. This could be a sign that these companies are gaining confidence about an economic recovery, and want to strike deals while real estate is cheap and local officials are hungry for projects.
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Koman Eyes Missouri Plot for Data Center
February 10th, 2009 : Rich MillerThe Koman Group is working with officials in Boone County, Missouri to develop a 192-acre tract as a data center, according to local media reports. Koman was one of the developers of a huge speculative project in Illinois that was later leased by Microsoft and will soon become one of the world’s largest data centers.
Koman is working with property owner Grindstone Investments, the city of Columbia and regional development agencies to gain necessary approvals to rezone the land for use as a data center. “One of the targeted industries for Columbia, Boone County and the state is data centers,” Chad Sayre, project engineer with Allstate Consultants, told The Missourian.
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Verizon Wireless Buys Colorado Fab Site
February 10th, 2009 : Rich MillerVerizon Wireless has acquired a former Vitesse Semiconductor Corp. chip plant in Colorado Springs, Colo. and plans to convert the 108,450 square foot building into a next-generation data center. The company expects to take about a year to complete work on the facility, which will be part of Verizon Wireless’ plans to expand its network capacity to accommodate growth in video traffic.
The project is the latest to feature the conversion of a former semiconductor facility for use as a data center. Like data centers, semiconductor plants require large power capacity, limiting the need for acquiring additional power from utilities. Some previous conversions:
- In 2006 HP purchased three buildings on the Austin, Texas campus of Freescale Semiconductor for use as part of its massive consolidation of 85 legacy data centers into six new facilities.
- Intel (INTC) converted one of its silicon chip fabrication facilities into a high-density data center, including an ultra-high density section supporting up to 30kw per cabinet. A video tour is available.
- In 2008, Fortune Data Centers announced that plans to convert a former Seagate fabrication facility in San Jose, Calif. into a 140,000 square foot data center.
Verizon Wireless paid $6.4 million for the site near Garden of the Gods Road in Colorado Springs, which was built for Vitesse in 1997 and used to make gallium arsenide chips. Vitesse paid $27.4 million to buy the building in 2002, but then closed the facility a year later.
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