Roundup: Level 3, Global Crossing, Fusion-io, Eaton

Here’s a roundup of some of this week’s headlines from the data center and hosting industry:

Fusion-io to acquire IO Turbine. Fusion-io (FIO) announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire IO Turbine, Inc., a provider of caching solutions for virtual environments. Fusion-io will pay up to approximately $95 million, subject to purchase price adjustments, for all outstanding securities of IO Turbine. Integrating the IO Turbine software with Fusion-io's platform will enable traditional storage infrastructures to keep up with the increasing demands of virtualized servers and expands Fusion’s market opportunities to both new and existing customers. “IO Turbine’s software is uniquely architected to take advantage of flash memory in the server to solve the I/O bottlenecks, the inhibitor to the adoption of enterprise virtualization,” said David Flynn, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Fusion-io. “We believe integrating ioMemory and IO Turbine adds a critical and previously missing performance component to virtualized IT environments that will accelerate the adoption of Fusion-io technology. This acquisition also underscores our focus on providing customers with an enterprise solution that features software and hardware components designed to accelerate their business’ full suite of applications.” Twenty IO Turbine employees will be added to the Fusion-io engineering team upon closing.

Level 3 acquisition of Global Crossing approved.  Level 3 Communications (LVLT) announced that stockholders of both companies voted to approve Level 3's proposed acquisition of Global Crossing (GLBC). "We are very pleased that stockholders of both companies have given their support to this transaction," said James Crowe, CEO of Level 3. "We believe that the combination of our two companies will create immediate and long-term value for our stockholders and customers. We continue to work to obtain the requisite regulatory approvals needed to close the transaction and begin the process of integrating the companies to realize the synergies and opportunities expected from the transaction." The companies continue to expect the transaction to close before the end of 2011.

Eaton offers 480/277V power distribution.  Eaton Corporation  announced 480 volt (V) configurations for its ePDU power distribution product line. Eaton introduced a new line of 400V ePDU products in March and continues to drive efficiency gains with this new 480/277V AC offering. Since utility power in North America typically enters a facility at 480V AC, Eaton’s 480V ePDU products remove the need for step-down transformers, reduce distribution costs and power high-efficiency 277V power supplies. The higher voltage allows for more efficient power distribution, resulting in less loss than at 208V. "We’ve noticed a trend with many of the new, cutting-edge data centers choosing a 480V power scheme and 277V custom power supplies that are extremely efficient," said Joe Skorjanec, ePDU product manager, Eaton Distributed Power Solutions. "Power distribution units at this voltage are usually only available as custom solutions. Eaton is among the first in the industry to offer 480V as part of our ePDU catalog offering in order to better meet the needs of server manufacturers."