Datacenters that stood out in size and financial investment in 2009
By siliconindia   |   Wednesday, 30 December 2009, 18:17 IST
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Bangalore: Although there were many high-profile datacenter builds announced this year, five datacenter projects in particular stood out, both in size and financial investment, reports Web Host Industry Review. First announced in June 2007, Google opened its new $600 million datecenter in Iowa in May. The datacenter is located on a 60-acre site in the Council Bluffs Industrial Foundation's new business park, across the Missouri River. The company says that the datacenter will create 200 new jobs, and will potentially expand beyond its 60 acres. In May, Apple announced plans to build a new 500,000-square-foot datacenter in North Carolina, a facility that could potentially cost upwards of $1 billion. Though the company has not revealed what it intends to use the datacenter for, rumours began to surface in August that the facility would house Apple's new cloud-based applications. In June, i/o Data Centers officially opened its 538,000 square-foot Phoenix ONE datacenter, which it calls the largest commercially available datacenter in the U.S. and the company's second Arizona-based facility. This datacenter incorporates a range of green technologies, including a 4.5 megawatt solar array on its 11-acre roof. Also demonstrating the popularity of Phoenix as a destination for datacenter construction, Global Datacenter Trust broke ground on its 160,000 square foot Phoenix NAP facility, which began announcing customers in August, and adding carriers to its meet-me room in December. In July, Internet Villages International secured almost $1 billion in financing to build its three million square foot "datacenter village" in Scotland. APC by Schneider will help design the datacenter to be an ecological, modular and scalable facility. The facility will have an abundance of low-cost land and water, four 100 MW diverse power feeds, 100 percent renewable energy and water, and design and build services that offer maximum energy efficiency. According to Web Host Industry Review, once completed, the $1.6 billion datacenter campus, entitled ALBA1, will eventually include more than 3 million square feet of datacenter space. The datacenter project could potentially turn Scotland into a hub for sustainable datacenters. In December, Scottish datacenter operator Lockerbie Data Centres' proposed $1.5 billion datacenter near Lockerbie, Scotland was finally approved by Dumfries and Galloway Council. First announced in March, the energy-efficient datacenter project was finally granted approval by local planning officials. The buildout could create up to 1,000 construction jobs and cost up to $5.2 billion in investment. Engineering consultant WYG will help Lockerbie Data Centres begin construction next year. Once completed, the facility will focus on e-commerce, information technology, international digital communications and horticultural research.

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