The Bunker Gets Expansion Funding

The entrance to an ultra-secure data center operated by The Bunker in Kent, UK.

The Bunker in Kent, UK continues to be on the vanguard of the market for ultra-secure “military grade” data centers housed in nuke-proof subterranean fortresses. The company announced this week that it has completed its fourth round of financing, raising £1million ($1.6 million US) of new funds from existing shareholders. The funds will be used to continue upgrading the company’s facilities at its Ash and Newbury Data Centres.

The Bunker, which has hosted clients in underground facilities since 1994, last year announced plans to expand with a 12,000 square meter (130,000 square foot) data center on its existing campus in Sandwich, Kent. As with the company’s two existing data centers, The Bunker 2 offers space for companies that need to be in the London market but are wary of the risk of disaster or terrorism.

European Data Center Revenue May Double

Several stories from recent weeks highlight the vibrant data center industry in Europe. Here’s a roundup:

European data centre revenue set to double
A report published by Tariff Consultancy Ltd notes that European data centre revenue is “set to more than double over the five year period from 2010 to 2015, with net raised floor space to increase by 70%, driven primarily by price increases.” The report gives pricing and forecasts for 19 of the EU25 countries and analyzes pricing of a standard 19″ rack, a small cage space and a 50 KVA suite of space for each of the countries.  It also dives into trends impacting data centres such as raised floor capacity in markets, revenue per square meter forecasts, electricity pricing, pricing per rack and cage, and the most expensive data centre countries.

Savvis received EuroFIT award
Financial technology publication Waters published their innagural EuroFIT awards earlier in the month, to recognize Europe’s hottest financial IT products and services.  In the category of Best Datacenter Hosting Provider, Savvis (SVVS) took the award as a company capitalizing on the rising demand for data center services.  Equinix was listed as an honorable mention in the category. A little over a year ago Savvis marked the completion of a global data center expansion by opening a 37,500 square foot facility on the outskirts of London in Slough. The award also noted that Savvis services seven of the top ten Fortune 500 financial services and banking firms. Amazon (AMZN) won the Best Cloud Provider award as an “overwhelming leader in the field.”

The Bunker selected by Cimar
The Bunker announced that it was selected by Cimar (UK) Limited to provide managed ultra secure hosting of its radiology image sharing web service. The Bunker delivered a scalable platform to Cimar built on Microsoft technology.  Howard Jenkinson, managing director of Cimar said “absolute information security is a pre-requisite for any digital service carrying sensitive patient information.”  Click here for a video of ‘The Bunker’ and details of a July 2009 130,000 square foot expansion.

Pirate Bay Hunkers in a Bunker

The outside of the CyberBunker, the new host for The Pirate Bay.

The Pirate Bay has gone underground. Literally. After being bounced from several hosting sites, the controversial download hub has relocated to the CyberBunker, an underground data center facility housed in a former NATO bunker in the Netherlands.

Within the last week The Pirate Bay has been offline for extended periods after moving from its previous home in Sweden to a facility in the Ukraine. The operators of the site have been cut off by several ISPs as entertainment companies pursue legal efforts targeting illegal downloads of copyrighted content.

Roundup: Equinix Thailand, Clearview, IBM

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

• Equinix sees potential in Thailand. The Bangkok Post has an article on the potential of Thailand becoming the next new market for an Equinix data center. Equinix CTO Lane Patterson is said to see Thailand “following the evolution of Japan and Korea with a local internet for local language content while another track sees faster and better international links for companies to do business and drive the economy.”  With only a 2% broadband penetration in Thailand, a carrier-neutral data center has the potential to kick-start the Internet ecosystem in the area and drive down prices for everyone.  The article continues to describe the Internet ecosystem of companies and players that make up Equinix customers and enable their facilities to be such a success.  Equinix recently hosted its annual Asia Peering Forum in Bangkok.
• Clearview completes Waco, Texas data center. Clearview Managed Services announced Wednesday the completion of a unique, multi-purpose data center in Waco, Texas. The new Information Technology Gateway (ITG) will be a 43,000 square foot facility focusing on disaster recovery and business continuity services. The facility features diverse fiber paths to a carrier hotel in Dallas with access to more than 200 carriers. Real estate development company Paul Kite Co. partnered with Clearview as developers of the facility and said that this development was part of a nation-wide data center development initiative for them. The data center is a repurposed nuclear fall-out shelter, providing a great deal of physcial security. Check out the July Data Center Knowledge post on the data bunker boomlet for this growing niche.

Prairie Bunkers Pursues Geothermal Cooling

Prairie Bunkers LLC plans to convert these World War II ammo sites in Nebraska into data centers.

We recently noted how American College Testing’s use of a geothermal cooling system boosted the energy efficiency of its data center in Iowa. Another new midwestern data center operator has now announced plans to pursue a geothermal cooling system for its project in Nebraska.

Prairie Bunkers LLC said this week that it has completed a test well for a geothermal cooling system at its 760-acre Prairie Bunkers Data Center Park near Hastings, Nebraska. The successful test of a vertical closed-loop system paves the way for the company to offer geothermal cooling for its innovative project.

Prairie Bunkers hopes to convert dozens of World War II ammunition bunkers into data centers, hoping to capitalize on interest in ultra-secure data storage. The company says its plans for geothermal power will help tenants achieve Platinum status under the the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating program for energy-efficient builfings.

“Prairie Bunkers is pioneering the use of geothermal cooling to reduce electricity usage in one of the most power intensive industries in the nation,” said Pam Brown, CEO of Prairie Bunkers.