Roundup: Fortress, Interxion, Equinix, Global Switch

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

Fortress Books $44 million in New Business. Fortress International Group (FIGI) announced that it has closed approximately $44 million in new contracts for the six months ended June 30, 2010, an increase of nearly 300 percent compared with $15 million in new contracts for the comparable period in 2009.  The $44 million can be divided by $12.4 million for technology consulting, $25.1 million for construction management and $6.2 million for facility management. "The sharp increase in our bookings is a strong indication of the recovering data center market, our solid repeat business and the strength of our business model as a full service provider," said Thomas P. Rosato, Fortress' Chief Executive Officer. "In addition to new contracts, we are attracting considerable repeat business from premier customers such as Power Loft, SAIC, Home Depot, US Army Corps of Engineers, as well as our three fortune 500 IT based customers and the NIH."

Interxion offers BATS Europe. Interxion announced that it offers low-latency access to BATS Europe, the fast-growing European Mulilateral Trading Facility (MTF).  With BATS Euorpe's system latency averaging 350 microseconds, customers at Interxion's London data center enjoy extremely low round-trip latency.  "With a growing pool of liquidity on our integrated and dark order books, as well as our pan-European smart order routing service, available via Interxion, we encourage Interxion customers to subscribe to BATS Europe quickly to benefit from our high-performance, low-latency trading platform," said Paul O'Donnell, COO of BATS Europe.

Transaction Network Services expands with Equinix.  Equinix (EQIX) announced that Transaction Network Services (TNS) Secure Trading Extranet is now offering low-latency connectivity through Equinix's International Business Exchange (IBX) data centers in Australia and Singapore. "Supported by TNS’ connectivity, our facilities in Australia, Hong Kong and Singapore become an even stronger platform for both new and current financial participants to build in and use for accessing Asia-Pacific markets,” said John Knuff, general manager, Equinix Financial Services. This announcement follow TNS deployments in Chicago, New York, London and Frankfurt.

Global Switch selected by Department of Defence. The Australian reports that Global Switch has beat out Polaris for a 10 year lease with The Department of Defence to kick start a decade-long, $417 million reform project.  In late March Global Switch announced that the planning of a new $200 million data center development in Sydney that would be adjacent to an existing facility which is the largest data center of its kind in the southern hemisphere.  The Department of Defence plans to move into the Global Switch data center by March 2010, when its current lease expires.  "Global Switch has been selected for providing the best value for money for the data centre facilities required by Defence for its future primary data centre," said Parliamentary Secretary for Defence Support Mike Kelly. "The lease of the new Global Switch data centre facility represents a significant milestone in ensuring that Defence has the capability to support its future ICT requirements with state-of-the-art data centre infrastructure.''