Links: Carter Validus, IO, ViaWest, Primus, Interxion

Carter Validus Acquires Southfield Data Center - Carter Validus Mission Critical REIT has acquired the Southfield Data Center in Southfield, Michigan for $7.25 million, the company said this week. The 53,000 square foot property is fully leased to two tenants, with the largest being Level 3 Communications, which occupies 39,000 square feet. Carter Validus says it plans to invest approximately $350,000 in improvements to the property. Carter Validus is focused on two sectors, data center and healthcare, citing societal trends that it believes will boost demand for data storage and outpatient healthcare. The company has previously acquired data centers in Dallas, Atlanta and Norcross, Georgia.

ViaWest Provides Colocation Services for HMS - ViaWest, one of the largest privately-held data center, cloud computing and managed services providers in North America, announces today that HMS, the nation’s leader in healthcare cost containment solutions, has selected ViaWest to provide reliable colocation, managed bandwidth, Disaster Recovery and temporary office space solutions. HMS chose ViaWest to modernize its data center infrastructure in response to the rapid growth it is experiencing.

IO Improves Hunt Construction Group's Disaster Recovery - IO has been awarded a contract by Hunt Construction Group, one of the top commercial builders in the United States. As part of the agreement, IO will provide Hunt with Data Center as a Service (DCaaS delivered out of the IO Phoenix data center. This approach supplies Hunt a secure, cost-effective data center with a concurrently maintainable, fully redundant solution without having to invest resources to deploy and maintain its own data center. "IO was the ideal choice when we decided to move our data center from our headquarters office to a more secure, off-site location," said Steve Atkins, Executive Vice President and CFO, Hunt Construction Group.

Orange Taps Interxion for Trading Infrastructure - Orange Business Services - Trading Solutions, which offers voice and electronic trading infrastructure for trading communities, is providing its  colocation offering via Interxion’s pan-European data centres. The move enables Trading Solutions’ customers to converge their voice and electronic trading infrastructure onto a single extranet and connect to all major trading platforms globally. Trading Solutions delivers unified communications services to more than 2,000 financial institutions and has over 40,000 turrets installed globally. Its dedicated trading extranet, TCSnet, facilitates trading between counterparties and enables financial services firms access to all of the world’s major financial hubs and liquidity pools. Trading Solutions connects to 47 markets from Interxion via TCSnet, offering its customers the best latencies and now includes both voice and electronic trading connectivity on a single network.

Primus Awarded Tier III by Uptime Institute- Primus Business Services, a division of Primus Telecommunications Canada, has been awarded Uptime Institute's Tier III Certification for Design Documents for the first phase of the company's GTA Data Centre located in Markham. This facility will be the only multi-tenant Data Centre in Canada to achieve the rare Tier III Certification for both design and construction from the Uptime Institute when it opens in July 2012. "The fundamental concept of Tier III is Concurrent Maintainability, and the benefit is that the Data Centre will never be shut down to maintain or replace the power infrastructure components or cooling equipment," said Vince Renaud, Senior Tier Certification Authority, Uptime Institute. "Once the construction is completed and verified by Uptime Institute, Primus will be the first and only full Tier III Certified commercial Data Centre in Canada."

Fox Rothschild Selects Philadelphia Technology Park - Philadelphia Technology Park announces that national law firm, Fox Rothschild LLP will make Philadelphia Technology Park its primary data center for the entire firm’s network. “Logistically, Philadelphia Technology Park is a great partner for us because their reliable services and network stability provide a safe place to store our data in one spot,” said Michael Rinehart, Chief Technology Officer of Fox Rothschild LLP. “Philadelphia Technology Park met our data and IT security needs and will be a valuable strategic partner for us.”