May 30, 2008 : The webhost industry: week review

📅 May 30, 2008 - On this Memorial-Day shortened week, the main thrust of the Web hosting industry news was much the same as any other week, with quite a few companies announcing plans to bring significant new data center space online.


Early in the week, data center operator Switch Communications Group reported plans to build a 400,000 square-foot data center in Las Vegas. The company is calling the $350 million facility "SuperNAP," and says it will use air cooling to support power loads of more than 1,500 watts per square foot. The company, which has purposefully remained under the radar up to this point, also launched a website that includes information about the company's services and five other data centers.

On Tuesday, we reported that Online Technologies, which provides disaster recovery and Internet infrastructure, had opened a new data center in Ann Arbor, Michigan, expanding the company's total footprint to 40,000 square feet. The new facility s 10,500 square feet, located in the Avis Farms technology park.

Late last week, hosting provider LiquidWeb issued an announcement that it was planning for the upcoming launch of a new data center. The announcement was mostly centered on the promise of an upcoming press conference to announce the facility's launch. Though it didn't describe the location of the data center, LiquidWeb said it would include 90,000 square feet of space, which it says can accommodate 25,000 new servers and several hundred employees.

On Tuesday, IBM announced that it had opened a facility in Guadalajara, Mexico, designed to help customers from anywhere in the world develop plans to archive large amounts of business information. The project is part of IBM's New Enterprise Data Center strategy. The company says it expects digital archive capacity worldwide to increase by 800 percent in the next five years.

And on Wednesday, data center operator Digital Realty Trust reported that it had completed a lease agreement with Yahoo! for one of its turnkey data centers. Yahoo! will establish a corporate data center in one of DRT's turnkey facilities, and the two organizations will work to achieve LEED Gold certification for the facility as a "green" data center.

In addition to being data center news, the Yahoo! and Digital Realty Trust deal was one of several "green" hosting announcements to arrive this week.

On Tuesday, data center operator Equinix reported that all of its four Silicon Valley Internet Business Exchange facilities had received certification from the Bay Area Green Business Program, a local government environmental organization. The standard reviews programs that support conservation, "green" purchasing policies, recycling, pollution control and transportation alternatives, via external audit.

And on Wednesday, also, data center industry environmental organization The Green Grid reported that it had expanded its efforts into Asia by establishing a presence in Japan. The organization has formed two new Japan work groups, and has established a formal relationship with The Green IT Promotion Council to help it extend its presence in Asia.

While most of this week's news promises ongoing impact of varying degrees, the story to watch most attentively is probably the LiquidWeb data center launch, as the company is promising more details on a press conference in the near future.