Findory to Shut Down Nov. 1

The personalized search engine Findory will shut down Nov. 1, founder Greg Linden announced Sunday on his Geeking with Greg blog. Findory, which was launched in 2004, has been on auto-pilot since January, when Greg said development was being shelved as he focused more on his health and family. Here’s Sunday’s update:

Sadly, all good things must come to an end. On November 1, 2007, Findory will be shutting down. It was a wonderful experiment building Findory. Information personalization is in our future. Some day, online newspapers will focus on your interests, building you your own unique, customized front page of news. Some day, search engines will learn from what you do to help you find what you need. Some day, your computer will adapt to your needs to help with the task at hand. Some day, information overload will be tamed. But not today.

On Friday, Greg wrote about his experience scaling Findory’s infrastructure, which offers an interesting window into how to design a personalized service for speedy performance and growth.

NaviSite Raises Revenue Guidance

Shares of managed hosting provider NaviSite Inc. (NAVI) are higher this morning after the company forecast revenue well above Wall Street’s expectations. Investors liked the results, as shares of NaviSite are up 80 cents to $8.58 a share (+11.5 percent) in early trading today on the NASDAQ exchange.

The company said late Tuesday that it expects sales between $36 million and $37 million for the quarter ending in October, while analysts polled by Thomson Financial had predicted revenue of $34.3 million. The company’s results will benefit from its recent acquisitions of netASPx, Alabanza and Jupiter Hosting, which totaled $56 million. Navisite expects full-year revenue of $170 million to $180 million, compared to analyst expectations of $150.5 million.

NaviSite has more than 1,000 customers and 14 data centers in the U.S., United Kingdom and India. The Andover, Mass. company provides application hosting services and operates a content distribution network. It has also added data center capacity with the Alabanza and netASPx acquisitions, expanding its colocation footprint.

News Stories on Data Centers On The Rise

News coverage of the data center sector has increased steadily throughout 2006 and 2007, according to Google Trends, which tracks news articles for mentions of specific topics. A search on the most common phrases used in industry coverage - data centers, datacenter and data centers - shows a clear upward trend in media mentions of all three terms by U.S. news sources, with a visible spike in July and August of 2007.

The broad upward trend can be explained by growing coverage of data center power and cooling issues in the IT press, and local news coverage of massive data center construction programs for Google and Microsoft. But what about the large spike in late July and early August? Google News doesn’t itemize all the news items, but the peak occurs right around the time that 365 Main suffered a power failure in its San Francisco data center, knocking prominent blog services offline.

Data Center Tours: Savvis and Netcetera

You’re plenty familiar with the inside of your data center. But what does the other guy’s data center look like? Several data center photo tours this morning provide a glimpse at facilities operated by Savvis and the UK’s Netcetera:

Wall Street & Technology offers a photo gallery of the Savvis data center in Weehawken, N.J., just across the river from Manhattan, which focuses on “proximity hosting” for financial exchanges. Many trading firms operate automated algorithm-based trading, in which execution speed is critical and fractions of a second matter. Being close to an exchange’s equipment is a priority for these firms. Savvis’ colo space allows traders access to major financial exchanges. Security is also at a premium, as shown by the photos of man-trap security corridors and biometric access scanners.

NaviSite Continues Acquisition Spree

Managed hosting provider NaviSite, Inc. (NAVI) said Wednesday that it paid $40.5 million to acquire app hosting company netASPx, including its 18,000 square foot data center in Minneapolis. NaviSite will pay $15.5 million in cash and $25.0 million in Convertible Preferred Stock. netASPx of Herndon, Va. specializes in applications management services for Lawson Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Kronos Workforce Management and Business Intelligence Applications.

The netASPx deal comes just a month after NaviSite acquired Alabanza and Jupiter Hosting for a combined $15.5 million. Baltimore-based Alabanza offers reseller hosting atop its proprietary automation platform, while Jupiter focuses on advanced hosting for bandwidth-intensive sites.

The netASPx acquisition adds Lawson and Kronos solutions to NaviSite’s existing portfolio of applications management expertise. NaviSite also noted that the netASPx data center in Minneapolis has “significant available capacity.” Tier 1’s Andy Schroepfer has a detailed analysis of the deal.

Involta Plans 20,000 SF Iowa Data Center

In another sign that the data center boom extends well beyond major markets, Involta LLC will said this week that it will spend $6.8 million to build a 20,000 square foot data center in Marion, Iowa. Construction on the facility at at 5700 REC Drive will begin in October, and the facility is projected to be operating in August 2008, according to local media reports. The data center will offer 10,000 square feet of raised floor space, with Cedar Rapids cable/telecom company ImOn Communications LLC occupying 3,000 square feet and providing the fiber optic infrastructure.

Involta is the successor to CoVault, a Cedar Rapids company that launched last year to offer colocation services from two former Global Crossing facilities in the area. The company is currently finalizing a merger with the Technology Resources Company, a data center operator also based in Cedar Rapids. The companies have offices in Cedar Rapids, Cedar Falls, Muscatine and Des Moines and employ 41 people.

DataPipe Opens Data Center in China

Managed hosting specialist DataPipe is opening a data center in China, the company announced today. The new Shanghai data center follows the opening of a facility in Hong Kong, which launched in December 2005 and was recently expanded. “Many of our clients are expanding their operations in China and are requesting managed services to support this growth,” said Robb Allen, CEO of DataPipe. “Shanghai is a regional expansion. We continue to see strong demand for Hong Kong.”

DataPipe is based in Hoboken, NJ, and provides managed services to enterprise companies, with many customers in the financial services and pharmaceutical industries. In recent years the company has expanded to add offices and data center infrastructure in London and Hong Kong. In mid-2006 DataPipe received $12 million in private funding to support its infrastructure expansion. It promptly bought data center facilities in Somerset, New Jersey and San Jose, Calif. in late 2006.

Infocrossing Bought by Wipro for $600M

New Jersey data center provider Infocrossing (IFOX) has agreed to be acquired by Indian software company Wipro Ltd. (WIT) for $18.70 a share, or about $600 million. The sale price is a premium of about 5 percent above Infocrossing’s Friday closing price of $17.73. Shares of the Leonia, N.J. company have been trading between $17 and $18.50 a share since early June, suggesting any “deal premium” may have already been factored into Infocrossing’s share price.

The deal is one of the largest overseas purchases by an Indian software maker, and will help Wipro enhance its off-shore infrastructure outsourcing services. “The acquisition will help Wipro address the existing gap in managed hosted services in infrastructure management,” said Sudip Banerjee, president, enterprise solutions, Wipro Technologies. “This will also open existing opportunities in the total outsourcing space, which include IT infrastructure services. We expect the combined infrastructure business to touch $1 billion in 24-36 months.”

“Infocrossing is a perfect fit in our remote infrastructure-services offering,” said Wipro Chief Financial Officer Suresh Senapaty. “We expect to achieve an industry-leading role with this acquisition.”