Terremark: Credit Crunch Scuttled Potential Sale

Terremark Worldwide (TMRK) said late today that a potential sale of the company was derailed by the credit crisis. The Miami-based colocation and managed hosting specialist said it received an unsolicited takeover offer in April, and worked on a potential deal through mid-September, when the Terremark board cited problems in the credit markets in its decision to halt efforts to sell the company.

Terremark said the takeover offer was presented by a “reputable investment firm” and represented a premium to the company’s stock price at the time. The offer kicked off a five-month in which a special committee of the board conducted an exhaustive market check to determine whether the proposed price was fair to shareholders. 

“No definitive transaction with any third party ensued as a result of the process in light of global economic conditions and credit market illiquidity,” the company said. “Therefore, the Board of Directors determined that it was in the shareholders’ best interest to continue executing the company’s business plan.”   

Hotelier Picks Terremark’s Enterprise Cloud

Preferred Hotel Group will use the Enterprise Cloud from Terremark Worldwide (TMRK) to provide disaster recovery services for its mission-critical applications, including its online reservation system, the company said today.

The Enterprise Cloud is a managed infrastructure service running on Terremark’s Infinistructure utility computing platform. The new cloud computing service seeks to marry the advantages of Amazon’s utility computing platform - especially scalability and rapid deployment - with enterprise-ready reliability to support mission-critical applications.

“Terremark’s Enterprise Cloud provides us the flexibility and control to provision our IT infrastructure to service the real-time needs of our business,” said Lindsey Ueberroth, Executive Vice President, Preferred Hotel Group. “By purchasing a dedicated pool of computing resources and allocating them as needed, we can respond in real-time to situations that may affect our operations.”

A Closer Look at the Enterprise Cloud

There’s been a lot of discussion recently about enterprise reluctance about cloud computing. Corporate IT managers are fascinated with the emergence of cloud computing platforms such as Amazon Web Services and Google’s App Engine. But they’re also wary of running their mission-critical applications on someone else’s platform, and concerned about meeting complex regulatory obligations for data management.

Colocation and managed hosting provider Terremark Worldwide (TMRK) is confident it has the platform to address the concerns of corporate users, as reflected in the name of its new service: The Enterprise Cloud. Terremark says the platform is enterprise-ready, running on “best of class” hardware and software from major vendors and designed to support the compliance standards of regulated corporate customers. The new service is built atop Infinistructure, Terremark’s fully-managed utility hosting service.

The Infinistructure platform, developed by Data Return prior to its acquisition by Terremark last year, allows companies to quickly deploy apps without buying hardware. In recent months, Infinistructure has been responsible for more than half of Terremark’s new business.

“We had clients that were interested in Infinistructure but still wanted to have more control of the virtual machines,” said Randy Rowland, VP Product Development for Terremark. “They asked ‘is there a way for me to control my virtual machines more directly, while you manage the infrastructure?’ Those client requests are what sparked our investment in the new software we’ve written for the Enterprise Cloud.”

Terremark Signs New Client at Capital NAP

Terremark Worldwide (TMRK) announced this week that Applied Systems, Inc. has leased space at the NAP of the Capital Region, the company’s new datacenter in Culpeper, Va. , Applied Systems is an insurance technology company that provides agency and broker automation, and will house its Software as a Service (SaaS) environment in colocation space at Terremark’s new facility.

“After carefully evaluating the market, we decided that Terremark provides the infrastructure and services that best met our needs,” said Tim Sander, Vice President of IT for Applied Systems. “From its world-class facilities to its acclaimed technology platform, Terremark presents a superior solution for our rapid growth and colocation needs.”

Data Center Tour: The NAP of the Capital Region

Norm Laudermilch, managing director of The NAP of the Capital Region, provides a tour of the ultra-secure data center built by Terremark Worldwide in Culpeper, Virginia (60 miles south of Washington, D.C.). Laudermilch provides a walk-through of the facility, which officially opens June 25, and describes some of the power, cooling and IT infrastructure Terremark has installed to support the data center. See our profile of The NAP of the Capital Region for more information. This video runs about 7 minutes, 30 seconds.

For additional information about Terremark (TMRK), see our Terremark Channel at Data Center Knowledge. For additional video, check out our DCK video archive and the Data Center Videos channel on YouTube.

Inside Terremark’s Culpeper Data Fortress

“If there were a more secure location, you wouldn’t be able to find it.” That’s how Terremark Worldwide (TMRK) describes the NAP of the Capital Region, its new $250 million data center project in Culpeper, Virginia.

The data center is ringed with a 10-foot-high fence topped with barbed wire, which stands at the outer edge of a 150-foot security perimeter populated with large earthen berms to slow intruders. The front entrance to the facility is protected by a 14-inch thick wall of solid concrete. All staff and visitors must pass through an enclosed “man trap” and several layers of biometric security before entering the facility.

No cars are allowed into the main campus housing the customer equipment. Vehicles making deliveries must pass through a “car trap” - a pair of concrete barriers that rise out of the roadway to restrict access during inspections - before proceeding to the equipment reception building, a separate facility from the main data center with a facade of bullet-proof glass.

The new facility is the lynchpin of Terremark’s push to capture additional market share in the market for ultra-secure government hosting. The 50,000 square foot first phase of the Culpeper data center doesn’t open until June 25, but Data Center Knowledge got an advance look at the site last week.

Inside Terremark’s Culpeper Data Fortress (Part 2)

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But Laudermilch said that key government clients told Terremark that they wanted to be at least 50 to 60 miles outside of Washington, insulated from regional disasters. Culpeper has a history as a government haven from nuclear disaster.

The NAP of the Capital Region is located across the highway from Mount Pony, an underground Federal Reserve facility that was established in 1969 as a “continuity of government” bunker to oversee the rebuilding of the US economy in the event of a catastrophe. In 1997 the facility was transferred to the Library of Congress, and now serves as a digital archive for the library’s electronic records.

That legacy has a major advantage for Terremark - fiber-optic infrastructure to support the Fed’s electronic funds transfer, and later the large-file transfers for the Library of Congress. Several fiber providers have recently invested in extending their networks to the Culpeper NAP.

Terremark Launches The Enterprise Cloud

Terremark Worldwide (TMRK) has launched The Enterprise Cloud, a new managed infrastructure service running on Terremark’s Infinistructure utility computing platform. The new cloud computing service seeks to marry the advantages of Amazon’s utility computing platform - especially scalability and rapid deployment - with enterprise-ready reliability to support mission-critical applications.

Terremark says the Enterprise Cloud will allow customers to “deploy fully configured production servers in minutes, dramatically reducing implementation times usually measured in weeks.” The Enterprise Cloud infrastructure is PCI compliant and meets rigorous standards including SAS 70 Type II and HIPAA. Terremark is not publishing pricing info for the new service.

“Terremark’s Enterprise Cloud clients buy a dedicated resource pool of processing, memory, storage and networking, from which they can deploy servers on demand,” said Randy Rowland, Senior Vice President of Product Development for Terremark. “This ‘Gigahertz and Gigabytes’ model gives customers more flexibility and agility over the traditional server-based model, allowing for a precise and dynamic allocation of computing resources as needed.”

Terremark Ups Guidance, Adds Anchor Tenant

Terremark Worldwide (TMRK) said yesterday that “business is booming” as the company reported strong results and raised its revenue guidance for the coming year. The company also said it has pre-leased 20 percent of the space in its new NAP of the Capital Region data center, which is scheduled to open later this month. The anchor tenant in the new complex in Culpeper, Virginia will be Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC), one of the largest systems integrators working with the federal government.

Terremark added 61 new customers in the quarter ended March 31, including Microsoft (MSFT), AOL and The Library of Congress, and now has a total of 983 customers. Revenues for the quarter were $56.8 million, an 85 percent gain from the year-earlier period and a 14 percent increase from the previous quarter. Revenues for fiscal year 2008 were $187.4 million, an 86 percent improvement over fiscal year 2007.

“Our fiscal 2008 results were exceptional,” said Terremark chairman and CEO Manuel Medina. “We were operating cash flow positive and expect to generate significant cash flow from operations in fiscal 2009. Our pipeline is very strong and our Q4 bookings were the best ever. In short, business is booming and based on our strong contract executions to date, we are raising guidance for fiscal year 2009.”

CSC, Terremark Team on Federal IT Deals

Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) will partner with Terremark (TMRK) on IT infrastructure and hosting deals with its federal government customers, some of whom will be hosted in Terremark’s new NAP of the Capital Region in Culpeper, Virginia. CSC, which is among the largest IT outsourcing and systems integration firms working with the government sector, selected Terremark following an extensive vendor review.

CSC said it anticipates continued strong demand for IT infrastructure services. The NAP of the Capital Region, which officially opens this June, will offer Terremark’s complete suite of managed services, its Infinistructure utility computing platform, and diverse connectivity options to Tier-1 network providers. The facility is located in Culpeper, 60 miles from Washington, D.C. and was designed to exceed standards for Federal data protection and physical security.