Data Center Links: Cobalt, NYI, Primus update from April 2013

Here’s our review of some of this week’s noteworthy links for the data center industry:

Cobalt selected by Zeneva.  Cobalt Data Centers announced that it has been selected by Florida-based Zeneva for its west coast interconnection and operations hub.  “We are excited to access the Cobalt Cheyenne ecosystem,” said Timothy Lee, director of operations of Zeneva. “We're building our own network, and as an emerging cloud provider having access to Level 3, TW Telecom, Hurricane Electric and numerous other carriers was very important. Cobalt is rapidly becoming known for its connectivity and fast growing ecosystem of content and cloud providers, so it was an obvious fit for a high performance cloud operation like Zeneva. And we intend to offer our full suite of products, including network and colocation, to West Coast users via the Cobalt platform.”

Clickbank expands at NYI.  NYI announced that Clickbank has increased its infrastructure footprint at NYI, a New York speciality data center solutions provider. After starting with NYI in the Bridgewater, New Jersey data center in 2010 Clickbank has upgraded to a customized colocation solution. "As one of the first tenants at their New Jersey facility, I am happy to report that all the efficiencies that NYI promised have not only come true, they have helped our business immeasurably," said Mark Hellbusch, Director of IT Operations for ClickBank. "With the upgrade, we look forward to continued growth for all of our vendors and partners."

BLACKIRON sold to Rogers Communications. Primus Telecommunications (PTGI) announced that it has sold BLACKIRON Data, its pure data center operations in Canada, to Rogers Communications for approximately CAD$200 million. BLACKIRON owns and operates eight data centers in five major cities in Canada, with approximately 4,000 customers. "The sale of BLACKIRON Data to Rogers marks a successful monetization of one of our worldwide assets. Looking ahead, the Board will consider various options for deploying the net cash proceeds of this sale," said Peter D. Aquino, Executive Chariman of Primus." Having separated our data center assets, rebranded BLACKIRON Data, and through our commitment to investing in fully certified Tier III capacity expansions and a second-generation cloud platform, we created a highly attractive portfolio across Canada," added Andrew Day, President and CEO of Primus. “We are extremely proud of BLACKIRON’s employee contribution in building this great company,” said AJ Byers, President, BLACKIRON Data. “As part of Rogers Business Solutions going forward, we are confident that BLACKIRON will continue to grow and flourish as a customer-focused and best-in-class data centre and cloud-based services provider”.