Telehouse to Heat Homes at Docklands

Can a data center heat your home or office? It can in London, where excess heat from servers at the new Telehouse West data center in the Docklands will soon be used in nearby houses and businesses. The Greater London Authority has approved a plan in which waste heat from the $180 million Telehouse colocation facility will be used in a district heat network for the local Docklands community.

The project is expected to produce up to nine megawatts of power for the local community, and allow the 130,000 square foot Telehouse West to reduce its carbon footprint by 1,110 tons. “The energy savings will equate to boiling 3,000 kettles continuously,” the company said.

Telehouse Europe’s expansion of its Docklands facility is the first major data centre to gain planning permission in London since the city passed stringent sustainability requirements. Telehouse said the project’s approval was enabled by green innovations developed with WSP Group, a London-based international sustainability and engineering consultancy. This will be the first time a data center heat export strategy has been introduced in the UK.

The Telehouse project is the most ambitious effort yet to reuse the excess heat from data centers. IBM has designed a data center in Switzerland that that uses waste heat to warm a  nearby community swimming pool. Researchers from Notre Dame University placed a rack of high-performance computing nodes at a local municipal greenhouse, the South Bend Greenhouse and Botanical Garden, to help heat the flowers and plants in the facility

Telehouse Names New President & CEO

Yasushi Kubota has been named President and Chief Executive Officer of Telehouse America and its parent company, KDDI America. Kubota replaces former President and CEO, Toshiaki Miki, who was recently named Vice President of KDDI Europe. Telehouse recently announced a major expansion in London.

Kubota is a 25-year veteran of the IT and telecommunications industry, serving in a wide variety of positions at KDDI, most recently as General Manager of Global Business Planning. He also served as KDDI’s General Manager of Global Corporate Sales, Senior Manager of Global Networks Projects; and Manager of International Relations and Affairs.

Huge Expansion for Telehouse London Hub

Telehouse Europe today announced a huge expansion of its London data center complex in the Docklands, one of the world’s busiest network traffic hubs. Telehouse will invest £80 million (about $162 million) in a new eight-story, 130,000 square foot colocation facility, a huge increase in the size of its London Docklands data center facilities.

The Docklands project in part of a global expansion of Telehouse facilities to meet surging demand for data center space from its clients in the financial and telecom indsustries. Telehouse will invest in an additional 160,000 square feet of new facilities near Paris and open a new 16,000 square foot data center in Singapore, a new market for the company. Telehouse recently opened a datacenter in Beijing, China and already operates three facilities in the New York area, and one apiece in Los Angeles and Hong Kong.

While no additional projects are planned in the US, Telehouse said that over the long-term it intends to expand across nine countries in South East Asia, Eastern Europe and emerging markets, giving it more than 1 million square feet of premium data center space by 2010.

NY Internet Exchange Tops100 Members

The New York International Internet Exchange (NYIIX), a carrier-neutral exchange point for New York providers, has experienced solid growth in recent months and now has 104 members. That’s up from 92 members in November 2006, according to Telehouse, which operates the NYIIX in its facility at the 25 Broadway carrier hotel in Manhattan.

The NYIIX is also experiencing higher traffic volume, up from 14 Gbps last year to 23 Gbps this year. NYIIX is equipped with IPv4 and IPv6 protocols, and provides Internet services such as DNS F, I, and J root servers, and an ENUM server for VoIP technologies.

Telehouse Reports Growth in NYC, LA

Colocation provider Telehouse announced that it has seen “double-digit growth” in both members and traffic at its Internet exchanges in New York and Los Angeles. The number of companies peering at the The New York International Internet Exchange (NYIIX) at 25 Broadway rose from 73 to 92 companies (26 percent) in the period between October 2005 and September 2006, Telehouse said. Membership at the L.A. peering exchange at 626 Wilshire Boulevard grew from 26 to 37 companies (up 42 percent).

Bandwidth upgrades helped fuel growth in peak traffi volume at both exchanges, Telehouse said. The NYIIX’s peak traffic volume went from 10.8Gbps to 19.4Gbps, while LAIIX peak traffic scaled from 1.0Gbps to 3.3Gbps. Telehouse attributed the gains to focused efforts begun in 2004 by the sales, marketing and Internet engineering teams.

“We anticipated the traffic volume trends driven by the media, entertainment, financial, legal, government and health sectors. NYIIX and LAIIX were ready to handle the demand,” said Akio Sugeno, the director of IP engineering at TELEHOUSE America.

Telehouse Beefs Up NYC Power Infrastructure

Telehouse America will expand the power capacity and infrastructure of its Broadway Center colo facility at the 25 Broadway carrier hotel in Manhattan. The upgrades, which will be compelted by December 2006, will make the facility more reliable and increase its power capacity by 20 percent. “As metro New York’s power distribution grows more uncertain yearly, the changes at 25B will insure that clients and NYIIX members will have dependable, secure power availability,” Telehouse said.

Telehouse said it will add four new UPS units to 25 Broadway’s existing UPS setup. In this setup - known as an N+1 configuration - if a UPS unit exhibits a power load distribution failure, the load will transfer to its UPS mate without interruption.

Telehouse said the UPS upgrades were motivated by New York area power outages over the summer. “An extremely hot summer severely tested New York’s power generation and distribution,” said Masahiro Furuya, president and CEO of TELEHOUSE America. “Our clients expect us to be their safeguard in these situations. This upgrade insures that we will meet our clients’ reliability expectations for years to come.”

Telehouse Internet Exchanges See Growth

Internet exchanges operated by colocation pioneer Telehouse in New York and Los Angeles experienced strong growth in the second quarter of 2006. The New York Internet Exchange (NYIIX) and The Los Angeles Internet Exchange (LAIIX) each added members as more companies opted for public and private peering’s economic benefits.

The NYIIX, metro New York’s largest peering exchange, now has ninety-three members as it welcomed Access IT, Choopa, Dream Tank, Freedom Networks, Interserver, Virgin Radio, MTN and Xand Communications. The increase in membership and upgrades for Globix/Neon and Internet Solution (which are at NYIIX’s home base at the 25 Broadway carrier hotel) helped the exchange hit a peak traffic volume just under 16Gbps.

“Paralleling our growth in peak traffic and membership is the expanded media and entertainment peering opportunities NYIIX and LAIIX offer our members and customers at 25 Broadway, 60 Hudson, 111 Eighth, and 626 and One Wilshire,” said Michael Vallone, head of marketing at Telehouse America. Our new members make this space even more attractive.”