IBM Builds Two Softlayer Data Centers for U.S. Federal Workloads

IBM is ready to open the first of two new Softlayer Cloud Services data centers designed and dedicated for U.S. government workloads and compliant with Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) and Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) requirements.

IBM will open the first of the new data centers in Dallas, Texas, this month.  Later this year, it anticipates activating a companion center in Ashburn, Virginia.  Each of the high-security data centers will have initial capacity for 30,000 servers.  They will be connected by an isolated, robust private network with 2 Tbps of capacity.

IBM is also building a dedicated Security Operations Center for the new data centers to provide government clients with added security, availability and incident response capabilities.

“Government clients will find SoftLayer services delivered via these new centers give them the ideal platform for the mission critical workloads they are moving to the cloud, or new web-centric workloads,” said Anne Altman, General Manager, US Federal, IBM.  “We’ve designed these centers with government clients' needs in mind, investing in added security features and redundancies to provide a high level of availability.  With business partners enabled to deliver cloud solutions via the new SoftLayer centers for the Federal government, we are fostering an ecosystem of innovation."

IBM said the new data centers are part of the $1.2 billion commitment to it announced earlier this year to expand its global cloud operations in all major geographies and financial centers. By the end of 2014, IBM will operate 40 data centers across five continents, and will double SoftLayer cloud capacity. Fifteen new data centers will be added to the existing fleet of 25, in locations including China, Hong Kong, London, Japan, India, Canada, Mexico City and Dallas.

http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/44131.wss

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Microsoft to Invest $346.7 million in Virginia Data Center

Microsoft will invest $346.7 million to expand its data center site in Mecklenburg County, Virginia. Microsoft’s original project in 2010 at the site in the town of Boydton involved an investment of up to $499 million. In 2011, the company invested an additional $150 million to expand the site, and in 2013 announced a $348 million expansion.

Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe welcomed the news, saying the expansion will create 90 new jobs in the area: “Microsoft’s data center campus in Mecklenburg County continues to represent transformational growth, opportunity, and investment for the region and for Virginia. The third expansion project brings the company’s total capital investment to more than $1.3 billion since 2010. Microsoft’s success and continued investment is a powerful testament to the benefits of doing business in Virginia and the thriving data center industry in the Commonwealth.”

The Virginia Economic Development Partnership worked with Mecklenburg County to secure the project for Virginia. Dominion Virginia Power, the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality, and the Mid-Atlantic Broadband Communities Corporation also were instrumental in securing this project. Governor McAuliffe approved a $1.6 million grant from the Governor’s Opportunity Fund to assist Mecklenburg County with the project. The Virginia Tobacco Indemnification and Community Revitalization Commission approved $1.6 million in Tobacco Region Opportunity Funds for the project.

https://governor.virginia.gov/news/newsarticle?articleId=4947
http://www.microsoft.com

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BT Inks Long-term Power Purchase with UK Wind Farms

BT signed long-term Power Purchase Agreements worth £440 million with three wind farms in Scotland, Wales and Lancashire, adding more than 100 Megawatts (MW) of renewable energy to help power its UK operations.

The energy will be supplied from the 48-turbine Fallago Rig wind farm located 35km southeast of Edinburgh in the Scottish Borders, the new Heysham South Wind Farm in Lancashire and nine-turbine Mynydd Bwllfa Wind farm in South Wales. Key points:

• BT will purchase 50 per cent of Fallago Rig’s output, enough to match the power consumption of its entire Scottish operations, in a deal worth around £300 million over the next two decades. 
• Its 15-year, £100 million agreement with Mynydd Bwllfa will provide enough electricity to match around 50 per cent of BT’s demand in Wales. 
• BT has also secured a 15-year deal to purchase electricity generated by the new Heysham South Wind Farm in Lancashire, worth around £40 million. 

BT said it consumed around 2 Terawatt hours (TWh) in 2013/14. It has reduced the energy needed to run its business for five consecutive years, saving more than £131 million in energy costs.

Rob Williams, BT’s head of energy supply, said: “These large-scale, long term agreements are a vote of confidence in UK renewable energy and support BT’s continued commitment to securing all its electricity from renewable sources.

http://www.btplc.com

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