Alpheus, Core NAP Expand in Texas

Two Texas providers, Alpheus Communications and Core NAP, announced expansions of their data center networks last week. Here’s some additional details:

• Alpheus Communications is opening a new 5,000 square foot data center in Houston. The new raised floor facility will serve enterprise colocation customers and will include high-density power and hot air containment systems. “This Houston facility completes the initial phase of our planned network of Texas data centers, complementing similar data centers in Austin and Dallas, all of which are interconnected by Alpheus’ fiber optic network,” said Chuck Sweeney, Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing. Alpheus is a joint venture between El Paso Corporation, a fortune 500 energy company, and Genesis Park, LP, a regional, Houston-based private equity firm.
• Austin-based Core NAP has completed the expansion of usable raised floor data center space from 7,500 square feet to 10,000 square feet and an expansion of infrastructure support space to a total of 5,000 square feet to meet increasing customer demand. Core NAP has also moved its corporate headquarters to Research Park Place at 12515 Research Boulevard, Suite 100, Austin, Texas 78759. The company is leasing 5,500 square feet of office space in the building to house its executive and sales teams plus new disaster recovery office space for customers and conference room capacity for business meetings.

$232M Data Center Planned for Forth Worth

Health Care Service Corp. is beginning work on a $232.5 million, 250,000-square-foot data center in the Alliance development in Fort Worth. The new facility is being built to handle anticipated member growth for Health Care Services, the fourth-largest health insurer in the U.S., which has an existing data center in Illinois. The company manages Blue Cross/Blue Shield plans in Illinois, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas that have more than 12 million members.

The data center will employ about 100 workers and is scheduled to be completed in the first quarter of 2010, with computer installations scheduled for May of that year, according to the Forth Worth Star Telegram.

Major Data Center Expansion for Colo4Dallas

Colocation specialist Colo4Dallas has bought two buildings and leased space in a third site to continue the expansion of its data center footprint. The expansion is yet another sign of the strong demand for colocation and dedicated hosting in the Dallas data center market, where major providers have been steadily adding data center space for the past two years.

Colo4Dallas confirmed today that it has purchased its current facility at 3000 Irving Boulevard, along with an adjacent property at 3004 Irving Boulevard that will be used for expansion space. In May Colo4Dallas leased 40,000 square feet of data center space in a nearby Level 3 data center in Dallas.

With the expansions, Colo4Dallas has increased its total data center space from 28,000 square feet to 106,000 square feet. The company has filled about 90 percent of the space in its original site at 3000 Irving, which it has occupied since 2000.

Dallas Infomart Owners Seek Financing

The owners of the Infomart, one of the major carrier hotels in the Dallas market, are seeking $135 million in debt financing for the property. ASB Capital Management, which is a partner with DCI Technology Holdings in ownership of the Informart, has hired Jones Lang LaSalle’s real estate banking division to help arrange the financing, according to the Dallas News.

The Dallas Infomart is a 1.2 million square foot technology hub that is currently 97 percent leased, with tenants including SoftLayer, The Planet, Dataside and Switch and Data, as well as network providers including MCI, Allegiance Telecom and Level 3.

RIM Buys Texas Data Center to Bolster Blackberry

Research in Motion (RIMM) has bought a large data center in Plano, Texas to expand the infrastructure for its hugely popular Blackberry device, providing network diversity that may help avert future service outages. RIM has purchased a 150,000 square foot data center in the Legacy Business Park in Plano that was developed by Stream Realty Partners, according to BizJournals.

The Blackberry e-mail network suffered a network outage in February that left its 12 million North American users offline for four hours. Research in Motion previously experienced a widespread network outage in April 2007, which left users without e-mail for more than 12 hours. After both outages, RIM was criticized for its reliance upon a data center in Waterloo, Ontario to handle all its North American messaging traffic.

In April we wondered if the February outage would prompt RIM to add infrastructure to support its Blackberry network. The move to add a Texas data center will allow RIM to shift network services should it encounter problems at its Ontario facility. Texas is a poopular site for backup data centers because the state has its own power grid.

Savvis Expands Dallas Data Center

Savvis Inc. (SVVS) has opened a second data center in Irving, Texas to meet strong demand in the Dallas market. One-third of the $50 million, 37,000-square-foot center is already leased, said Jim Kozlowski, vice president of hosting services for Savvis. Kozlowski told the Dallas Morning News that the company is likely to add a third expansion phase of 45,000 square feet within a year to 18 months.

The new space continues the robust growth for data center providers in the Dallas area. Last week CyrusOne announced it was building a new Dallas data center, while SoftLayer and Telx have also added space in recent months. Dataside will also be expanding its Dallas data center footprint in the wake of its recent acquisition by Denver-based ViaWest.

CyrusOne Expands With Dallas Data center

Houston-based managed hosting provider CyrusOne will open a new facility in the Dallas metro area, citing growing demand for fully-redundant (2N) data center space. The new facility at The Convergence Technology Center will provide up to 80,000 square feet of space with up to 13.5 megawatts of power, supplying more than 250 watts per square foot to support high-density server technology. Customer installations will begin in May of 2008.

The opening of the new facility expands CyrusOne’s existing inventory in the Dallas market. In 2006 the company unveiled a 5,000 square foot data center at 2323 Bryan Street (Univision Building) that has since reached capacity.

“We are seeing a dramatic shift within large corporations, whereby they are strategically choosing to no longer invest millions of dollars to build and operate their own data centers,” said David Ferdman, President and CEO of CyrusOne. “Our decision to expand our footprint in Dallas was driven by a growing national demand within our existing customer base and with new prospects, for higher density and higher availability colocation services.”

SoftLayer Adds Space in Dallas Infomart

SoftLayer is opening a second data center facility inside the Dallas Infomart, and upgrading its core networking infrastructure in the building, the company said today. The expansion into an additional 5,000 square feet of space provides SoftLayer with 220 more racks for its hosting clients.

“The new data center resides within the same building as our current facility, but it is completely redundant from all other risk variables, including power, bandwidth, and cooling,” said Lance Crosby, CEO of SoftLayer. “This allows us to deliver an additional level of failover and disaster recovery for customers seeking redundant Dallas facilities.”

SoftLayer becomes the latest Infomart tenant to expand its operations at the distinctive 1.2 million square foot carrier hotel in Dallas. Other data center providers who have expanded within the Infomart include Dataside and Switch and Data. The building, which is owned by DCI Technology Holdings, is among the beneficiaries of strong demand for Dallas data center space.

Blue Cross Eyes Ft. Worth for $175M Data Center

Blue Cross/Blue Shield wants to build a $175 million, 220,000 square foot data center in Fort Worth, and is waiting on a tax abatement from the Forth Worth City Council to clinch the deal, according to the Fort Worth Business Press. The 50-acre site near the Alliance Gateway beat out several other alternatives in Texas - including sites in Richardson, Plano, Carrollton and Dallas - as well as properties in Denver and Phoenix.

“If the tax abatements go through, we have a verbal commitment that Blue Cross Blue Shield will build the facility in Fort Worth,” said David Berzina, Fort Worth Chamber executive vice president of economic development. The company has applied for a 50 percent tax abatement, which would reduce Blue Cross/Blue Shields tax payments to about $9.5 million over 10 years.

Telx Expansion May Boost Dallas Building

The Dallas data center market continues to see brisk activity. On Tuesday Telx opened its new facility at 8435 Stemmons Freeway in Dallas, where it has leased 25,000 square feet of space. The building’s owner, Diversified Capital, is hoping that the presence of Telx will attract additional data center tenants to fill space vacated by First American Financial Corp.

Telx will link the new facility with its Meet Me Room at the Univision Tower Building (2323 Bryan Street), enabling customers in the new Stemmons site to access more than 70 networks. “This gives us the foundation to do further leasing,” Bruce Stern, vice president of business development at Diversified Capital, told the Dallas Morning News. “It fills up the most valuable space in the building, and it’s data center space, which is much more lucrative than office space.”

Yesterday we noted that Unified Infrastructure Services has been aggressively buying up data center space in the Dallas market, including the carrier hotel at 2020 Live Oak. Dataside recently announced plans to build a fifth data center in the Dallas market, while Databank, Securus, Skyrise Properties and Behringer Harvard have all acquired data center space in Dallas since last summer.