Colo Bytes 2-11: i/o, QTS, Digital Realty, InterXion, Level 3, CENX, PAETEC

Quite a bit of news lately in the colo segment that didn’t have to do with telcos buying cloud capabilities:

Yesterday, i/o Data Centers opened another facility in Phoenix, but this time it’s not  a giant colocation center but rather a 221K square foot factory.  They’re gearing up to build data center modules for their i/o ANYWHERE product line, as many as 18MW per month initially.  The first such modules will be ready in the first half of this year.  What i/o is trying to do is not just to build and operate fixed facilities, but transportable ones as well that increase their addressable market to large enterprises just about anywhere there’s enough power.  Definitely worth keeping an eye on.

Digital Realty Trust (NYSE:DLR, news, filings) has signed a lease agreement with FIBERTOWN in Houston for turn-key space.  FIBERTOWN currently offers colo, disaster recovery, and business continuity services from a 24k square foot datacenter 100 miles to the northwest in Bryan.  This 30k square foot expansion into North Houston more than doubles their footprint.  Digital Realty also raised its quarterly dividend yet again to $0.68 per share, they make it look easy to be a REIT.

Out in the midwest, cable MSO Cox Communications has moved in with QTS in Wichita, adding more Midwestern colocation space and joining the facility’s list of network providers.  Wichita isn’t exactly the best known colocation market, but then cable providers have different territorial considerations than other network providers and Wichita is a Cox market.  The deal is a multi-year strategic relationship that will help both Cox and QTS.

And over in Europe, InterXion (NYSE:INXN, news) won a key strategic partnership with NYSE Euronext.  The exchange’s global commercial tech unit, NYSE Technologies, will leverage Interxion’s footprint to power its pan-European and Asian trading network.  What that means initially is that they’ll be in Interxion’s City of London data center selling those low latency trading and risk management solutions and such.

Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) has been spending to increase its own datacenter capabilities lately, and yesterday they expanded their offerings to include SAN fiber channel, dark fiber, and managed fiber solutions.  They are targeting more of the enterprise space than in the past, one wonders if they have designs on the cloud-based managed services market at some point.  They already bought a piece of Savvis, why not the rest?  Haha.  But for this year I doubt it – too many other things to get done in 2011 for Level 3.  Those would be revenue growth, revenue growth, and – oh yeah – more revenue growth.

CENX (news) won a major new partner down under.  Telstra International is extending the reach of its Ethernet offerings into CENX’s Los Angeles exchange facility.  They’ll be there as both buyer and seller, looking to speed up their off-net service deployment.  CENX has made great strides in gaining partners from the eastern hemisphere in recent months, including China Telecom, China Unicom, KDDI, and now Telstra.

And finally, PAETEC (news, filings) opened a new datacenter in Phoenix from which it hopes to expand the managed and cloud services it offers to the enterprise market.  While the big telcos moves on the cloud have been recent and public lately, PAETEC seems to have been aiming at this market for some with highly targeted datacenter buildouts.  The new Phoenix facility is 4,400 square feet in size.    PAETEC also just bought XETA Technologies the other day, further strengthening their managed services offerings.

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Categories: Datacenter · Ethernet