Issue 8, Feb/Mar 10
FOCUS NEWS UK & EUROPE
WELLCOME TRUST BECOMES LARGEST SINGLE SHAREHOLDER IN ICELAND DATA CENTER
London-based charitable foundation Wellcome Trust agreed to make an equity investment in Verne Global’s project, converting a former NATO command center in Iceland into a data center. The trust will finance construction of the facility’s first phase.
The investment makes Wellcome – second largest biomedical research funding foundation in the world – the largest investor in Verne, a Keflavik, Iceland-based wholesale data center developer.
Verne says its data center complex, whose total footprint is about 430,600 square feet, will take advantage of the large amount of free cooling available in Iceland, as well as
MITIE, a facilities planning and project management firm, won a contract to expand Infinity SDC’s data center in the London area named Infinity TWO. Infinity is a data center
outsourcing firm, operating two mission-critical facilities in the UK. According to a DCD
DatacenterResearchGroup report, about 18 percent of enterprises in the UK outsource some or all of their facility needs, key sectors being finance, retail and commerce, colocation and managed services, government, telecoms and education. MITIE is expecting demand
for its data center services to be driven by companies’ need to increase operational efficiency. DCD research discovered that power consumption and total cost of ownership were two biggest concerns in the market. “This is a really exciting
opportunity for us that allows
its renewable energy sources and predictable power rates.
“Large scale customers face a critical need to reduce substantially the power costs and carbon footprints of data centers,” Wellcome Trust Investment Division’s Dominic Ward said in a statement. “Verne Global is breaking new ground in using Iceland’s natural green resources to mitigate both increasing emissions and rising energy costs.”
Other investors in the project are venture capital firm General Catalyst and investment firm Novator.
Besides being the second largest biomedical
MITIE to integrate with Infinity’s in-house engineering team to deliver some of the most energy efficient solutions in the market today,” MITIE Managing Director Mark Stokes said in a statement. The Infinity TWO expansion
will yield about 100,000 square feet of data center space. The facility – a former distribution warehouse – is located near Romford, London. Infinity is investing £100 million into the expansion project. Infinity SDC is funded by
private banks and currently holds more than 300,000 square feet of real estate slated for data center build-out in the southeastern UK. In a recent financing round, the company raised more than £23.5 million.
HP has won a multi-year contract to operate data center services of a Finland-based manufacturer of large industrial cranes. The services include hosting of application servers,
back-up infrastructure and databases. The contract with
Konecranes (the client) is for seven years, starting in 2010 and ready for implementation by 2012. Seven Konecranes employees will join HP next year, under the agreement. “Through this agreement
we will be able to offer a standardized solution for IT data services,” Konecranes CIO Antti Koskelin said in a statement. “This new arrangement will also give us the opportunity to operate world-class business applications.” Konecranes is present in 43
countries, providing lifting equipment to manufacturing and process industries, shipyards, ports and terminals. The company’s sales revenue in 2008 totaled €2,103 million.
Irish network and hosting provider Digiweb has acquired Internet Ireland, a colocation,
managed services and network connectivity provider. The buyer said it
was committed to consolidation in hosting and telecommunications markets with the goal of improving the quality of products it provides to its clients. The deal came about one month after network provider Smart Telecom joined Digiweb Group as a member to combine services the two companies provide. Financial terms were not
disclosed.
CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, has chosen Platform’s workload management solutions to manage its recently built cloud computing environment, reportedly largest of its kind. CERN’s cloud computing
environment serves as a research platform for about 10,000 scientists.
research funding organization, Wellcome is the largest foundation in the UK, with an investment portfolio that totaled $21 billion, as of September 2009.
Overcome Legacy Issues to Reduce the Carbon Footprint and OPEX of Your Facility
• Setting objectives and managing retro-fit data centre projects • Adopting data centre standards and classifications • Incorporating ICT and facilities strategies to deliver projects on time and to budget
a event
www.datacenterdynamics.com/manchester Contact Chris Lambert on +44 (0)20 7426 7834 or
chris.lambert@
datacenterdynamics.com
Book before April 2nd to save
£100
www.datacenterdynamics.com 7
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52