Internap to Expand in Los Angeles In 2012

For the second time this year Internap (INAP) unveiled plans to expand its network of company-owned data centers. On Thursday Internap announced that it will open a new data center in Los Angeles to meet increased demand for colocation services. This will be the company's eighth North American facility and continues its strategy to build a geographically diversified platform of premium data centers. In February Internap announced plans to expand in the Dallas / Fort Worth market.

The Los Angeles data center will be located just 6 miles from the airport and include 55,000 square feet of sellable data center footprint over time.  The first phase of approximately 15,000 square feet will open in the second quarter of 2012.

"According to Tier 1 Research, the utilization of colocation space available in the Los Angeles area exceeds 90 percent," said Mike Higgins, senior vice president of data center services at Internap. "With the addition of Los Angeles to our portfolio, Internap is able to provide these growing enterprises with data center space that can be tailored to their specific IT Infrastructure needs – from colocation, managed hosting and cloud services to high-performance enterprise IP and Content Delivery Network services – and can quickly scale to support their business growth requirements"

The Los Angeles data center will also feature a full range of customer amenities, including fully equipped office areas, technical workspaces, dedicated customer work environments and a full-service customer lounge.

Planning for the future

Internap says they will leverage modular designs and support power densities of up to 12 kW per cabinet. It will also employ high efficiency UPS system, free-cooling methods and other sustainable operational best practices. Internap will submit the data center for Green Globes certification, LA County Green Building Standards compliance, LEED certification and an Energy Star rating.

Internap also released first quarter 2011 financial results Thursday, with revenue of $59.4 million compared with $63.4 million in the first quarter of 2010.  The first quarter of 2011 is the last quarter impacted by a program in place to proactively churn certain less-profitable contracts in partner data centers. Cash and cash equivalents totaled $46.3 million at March 31, 2011.

"We believe the first quarter of 2011 represents an inflection point from which the company returns to top-line growth in both of our business units, Data center services and IP services," said Eric Cooney, President and Chief Executive Officer of Internap. "Positive trends across the business including: bookings growth, reduced churn, and enhanced customer satisfaction, give us confidence in our expectation for sequential revenue growth in the second quarter."