Data Bytes 6/6: Digital Realty, Akamai, C7, AboveNet, Peer 1

Quick takes on some expansion news from Digital Realty and C7, an acquisition by Peer 1, another contract for Akamai, and the results of the shareholder vote at Abovenet:

Digital Realty Trust (NYSE:DLR, news, filings) is expanding into suburban Chicago. The datacenter REIT has acquired a three building, 575,000 square foot campus 10 miles southeast of O’Hare International Airport on Grand Avenue.  They’ll be redeveloping the property into a new 22 acre data center campus to be called Digital Chicago. It will feature twenty 1.125MW turnkey datacenter PODs, the first six of which will be phase one – due in mid 2013. The purchase price was $22.3M, with the current owner continuing to rent 2/3 of the property on a short term lease until Digital Realty is ready for the next phase.

Utah datacenter operator C7 Data Centers (news) says that it has completed its major phase II expansion in Bluffdale, bringing an additional 11,000 square feet online. Given that 60% of that space has already been sold, they also detailed the timing of phases III (17K square feet by the end of 2012) and IV (11K square feet in early 2013). And if that weren’t enough, they said a new data center facility would be announced later this year.

Peer 1 Hosting says that will acquire UK-based NetBenefit from Group NBT Limited in a bid to add more muscle to its European presence.  NetBenefit provides managed  hosting services to some 700 customers from two data centers in the UK and France, the addition of which Peer 1 says will put them in the #2 slot for UK SME hosting and a platform to expand on the continent.  The deal will cost them £25m in cash and bring in about £7m in annual revenues.

Akamai (NASDAQ:AKAM, news, filings) ignored the Netflix hullaballoo and continued down what is now a familiar path with a familiar retail website performance contract. Motorcycle Superstore has leveraged their cloud-based platform to protect against application-level attacks and to accelerate its websites. They claim at 15% capex reduction on security hardware and a 10% reduction in bandwidth costs associated with handling attack traffic.

And AboveNet shareholders took the plunge and gave the company’s purchase by Zayo their stamp of approval. Not that there was much doubt of course. The acquisition is still expected to close in mid 2012, which I’ll bet will translate to the end of this month – although nobody can be completely sure when it comes to regulatory approvals and such. Zayo has been busy in the meantime, announcing just yesterday the purchase of FiberGate as well as making one of the necessary moves in the debt markets for the AboveNet deal the day before.

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Categories: Content Distribution · Datacenter · Mergers and Acquisitions