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Data center deals slowed in London in the first quarter of 2008, and as a result the total space leased in 2008 is not likely to match the robust growth levels seen in 2007, according to new data from CBRE's Technology Practice Group. CBRE said demand for data center space for financial services companies has slowed. London has traditionally been a strong market for data center space, with an imbalance between the demand and the space available. As a result, data center developers and service providers have been actively expanding operations in or near the city. While CBRE says that while it expects leasing to pick up, the first quarter was unusually slow. "This has been the lowest quarter for take-up in London since the emergence of the corporate market in 2004," said Andrew Jay, Head of Technology Practice Group, CB Richard Ellis. "London has been significantly affected by the current financial climate due to the large number of financial services companies in the market. Although Quarter 1 take-up has been low, there are a number of large deals that will come to fruition in 2008 and while we will not see the same levels of take-up as last year (which was a record-breaking year) we do expect levels to exceed those of 2005 and 2006."
A financial trading system has executed 1 million messages per second, establishing a new speed record. The landmark was announced jointly by Sun Microsystems and Intel, which designed a low-latency system for the Thomson Reuters Market Data System, a platform used by Wall Street financial houses to aggregate data and complete trades. "We've broken the 1 million messages per second barrier using off-the-shelf Intel-chip hardware and Solaris 10," Ambreesh Khanna, CTO for Sun's financial services division, told Network World. "Reuters Markets Data System is widely used to aggregate information, and algorithmic trading is one reason market data has more reason to focus on latency."
A $390 million contract to consolidate data centers for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been awarded to Computer Sciences Corp. (CSC). The DHS is in the process of consolidating 18 data centers into two next-generation facilities. CSC will take over management of the first DHS facility, based at NASA's Stennis Space Center in Mississippi, from Science Applications International Corp. See NextGov for details.
Microsoft's decision to adopt data center containers in its next-generation facility in Chicago provided a way to optimize the company's computing infrastructure for extraordinary density and scalability. By housing equipment in 40-foot shipping containers, Microsoft gained another major benefit: energy efficiency. At a time when the industry is focused on green data centers, the data center containers used in Microsoft's testing are exceptionally efficient, according to the Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) metric developed by The Green Grid. "On the proof-of-concept we ran we saw PUE numbers come in at 1.3, and if you compare that with historical data centers, it's very, very low," said Daniel Costello, Microsoft's Director of Data Center Research. "Most data centers around the world would be 1.6 to 2.0." In a presentation at last week's Structure 08 conference in San Francisco, Costello said the containers' efficient power architecture allows Microsoft to put between 1,000 and 3,000 servers in a container, based upon the configuration.
Yesterday we looked at the strong performance of data center stocks in the just-concluded second quarter. But how about the year to date? The first half of 2008 was a rough ride for publicly-held data center companies, as adding the first quarter results produced a more mixed picture. Half of the 12 stocks we track outperformed the Dow, which declined 14.4 percent in the first half. Only four companies' shares were in positive territory, and of those only Rackable (RACK) holds a double-digit gain for the year (up 34 percent). As we noted yesterday, Rackable has benefitted from growing interest in servers for high-density cloud computing and data center containers, two of the specialized markets targeted by the company. Here's our list of data center stock performance for the first half of 2008.  For additional market data and historic performance, see our full-year roundups for 2006 and 2007 and the first quarter and second quarter of 2008.
Go Daddy said this week that it is now managing more than 30 million domains, the latest reminder that the domain registrar has assembled one of the largest business platforms on the Internet. "Go Daddy's market share of new domain registrations is now more than 45 percent worldwide," Go Daddy chairman and CEO Bob Parsons said in a video blog. It's surprising to me that Go Daddy's name hasn't come up in the speculation about potential acquisitions and partnerships prompted by the Microsoft-Yahoo talks. Many Americans know Go Daddy primarily for its edgy, bazoom-filled Super Bowl commercials. But the company's domain registry business is a powerful engine for acquiring customers for hosting and other Internet services. Go Daddy is aggressive – even by registrar standards - in using its domain checkout process to upsell hosting services and e-commerce products. Here's an example: Go Daddy's e-commerce business is flourishing. The company said this week that revenues are up 72 percent this year for customers using Go Daddy's Quick Shopping Cart to sell products through their web sites.
When IBM rolled out its $1 billion a year Big Green data center initiative last May, we noted the program's "symbolic importance as a sign that Corporate America is mobilizing to tackle the tough environmental challenges." But are companies making Big Green purchases? They are indeed, according to IBM, which says the Big Green initiative "has emerged as one of the most successful in IBM history." IBM says it made $300 million in new revenue from green client engagements in the fourth quarter of 2007, working with 2,000 clients and building more than 40 green data centers across the world.
Microsoft's new data center project in Iowa will be located in the Des Moines area, where the company is still reviewing potential sites. "I can confirm, subject to approval of the state and local assistance, that we're looking at a final list of properties in Des Moines for the future construction of the data center," Microsoft spokeswoman Beth Jordan told the AP. Stephanie Bjornson, a spokeswoman for the Iowa Department of Economic Development, said the company wasn't releasing the potential site locations, number of jobs and scope of the project. She said the state is negotiating with the company on tax breaks. But Gov. Chet Culver is already rolling out the welcome mat. "On behalf of all Iowans, let me be among the first to say ‘Microsoft, Welcome to Iowa!’" Culver said in a statement. "In making its decision, Microsoft recognized what we in Iowa have known all along – our workforce and quality of life is second-to-none. Their decision to make Iowa their newest home will have a tremendous impact on our local economy and our state as a whole. ... We look forward to working with Microsoft in the coming months as this project takes shape, and expand our economic opportunities here in Iowa."
Microsoft has confirmed that it has acquired natural language search engine Powerset. In announcing the deal, Powerset's Mark Johnson affirmed much of our analysis yesterday about how a Microsoft-Powerset deal could accelerate the completion of a semantic index: With an existing search infrastructure, incredible capital resources, unlimited data, a leading search team, and clear mission to revolutionize the search landscape, Microsoft can rapidly accelerate our progress in building semantic search technology and bringing it to full Web scale. The biggest feedback that we got when we launched our first product was: this is great, but when and how will we get Powerset go beyond Wikpiedia? Microsoft accelerates our ability to move Powerset to the entire web faster than anyone could have imagined.No price was mentioned in the announcements. Venture Beat reported that the deal was likely to be in the $100 million range.
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Posted by Rich Miller 
July 03, 2008 |