of all renewable energy for its customers that is available to both home owners and businesses. The plan is called Blue Sky and this would provide a 100% blend of renewable energy to Facebook if they chose to subscribe to this plan. The renewable blend does cost 10% to 25% more if Facebook wants to pay for it. I know for a home owner Pacific Power is about 6 cents per Killowatt and Blue Sky adds 1.95 cents per Killowatt in a package that is sold in blocks. A business like Facebook could certainly negotiate with them for a highly discounted rate to get that price down as well. If Facebook wanted to avoid coal based power they certainly could, instead they have chosen to go for reduced costs vs reduced carbon footprint.

For more about Pacific Powers Blue Sky Power program- http://www.pacificpower.net/bus/bsre.html

Read more here.

Equinix cleared for merger of Switch and Data

Building from the Bottom Up

When looking for space for the data center, companies often build their data centers in rural areas where there’s plenty of space, operating costs are relatively low, and it’s easier to get tax breaks.

Companies also tend to look for a climate that will help keep costs and the environmental impact lower.

So who’s in on this trend? Companies like Facebook, Google, Yahoo, Apple, the National Security Agency, and many others have decided that it’s time to build their own.

New Data Center Construction

Back in 2006, Google was one of the leaders of this trend when it broke ground on a data center in Dalles, Oregon. Soon after, Microsoft and Yahoo announced plans to build huge data centers about 130 miles north, in Wenatchee and Quincy, Wash. And that was just the beginning.

More recently—last July to be exact—Microsoft opened a 303,000 square foot data center outside of Dublin, Ireland. It was built to provide 5.4 megawatts of power and is expandable to 22.2 megawatts. The data center makes use of Ireland’s cool air temperatures to the point that this data center is 50 percent more efficient than Microsoft’s other centers. Still, long distances can slow the transmission of data—which explains why even Microsoft keeps most of its data centers closer to home.

Case in point, the same month of the Dublin opening, Microsoft opened another data center in Chicago. Covering more than 700,000 square feet, it was built with 30 megawatts of power available when it opened, with expansion capabilities up to 60 megawatts. Two-thirds of the servers in this facility are in containers, which allows the company to expand quickly—and their server density can be more than 10 times that of a traditional data center.

Facebook’s first custom data center in Prineville, Oregon (of course, complete with a fan page on the social media site) is scheduled to be finished in early 2011. It will be a 147,000-square-foot data center and will reportedly cost about $180 million. The location was chosen due to its reliable and affordable power, a dry climate, and tax breaks. According to the company, the choice to build its first data center was based on the company’s growing demand to store the profiles, status updates, photos, and other information. “Now with more than 350 million people worldwide and our service and business continuing to grow, we must constantly scale our technical infrastructure to meet the demand and deliver you a fast, reliable experience,” wrote Jonathan Heiliger, vice president of technical operations, in a note posted on the site. “An important step along the way is to build a custom data center so that we can design it to meet our unique needs.”

Yahoo! is also in the throes of building a dedicated data server, which will cover about 190,000 square feet. The availability of low-cost electricity, as well as tax breaks, were key when Yahoo! decided to locate its East Coast data center in Lockport, NY. This data center is also making an especially big splash with its unique environmental initiatives, including being mostly powered by hydroelectric power from Niagara Falls. The $150 million project is set to open this summer.

Another data center in the work includes Apple’s new $1 billion data center, which is being constructed in Maiden, North Carolina and will reportedly be nearly five times the size of their existing 109,000 square foot Newark, Calif. facility.

What’s next? No doubt, more announcements of dedicated data centers will follow. So stay tuned…

If you want to read a little more, including a great quote by our very own president, click here:

http://www.forbes.com/feeds/businesswire/2010/03/23/businesswire137142899.html

If you’d rather not leave our website for any reason (it is pretty cool here, so we’d definitely understand this), here’s the official statement from BandCon:

BandCon Recognizes AstoundCom as Premier Partner

BusinessWire – BandCon, a leading internet infrastructure services provider, is pleased to announce that AstoundCom has been recognized as Premier Partner for 2009, the company’s highest distinction for sales performance and productivity.

“BandCon and AstoundCom have forged a great partnership, and we want to recognize their contribution to our success,” said Matt Haentzschel, Chief Revenue Officer for BandCon. “They share our philosophy for offering customers a choice in service providers and the platforms needed in today’s ever-changing world, and we are pleased to be a part of their offering.”

As a single source provider of Information Technology and Communication Services, AstoundCom takes full advantage of the BandCon Content Delivery System(TM), as they offer customers of all sizes the services and expertise they need to be successful in the marketplace.

“As was the case with most companies, 2009 presented many challenges; amidst those difficulties, our partnership with BandCon was a bright spot,” said Cameron Larson, President of AstoundCom. “This partnership allowed us to offer carrier class transit, transport and colocation services at highly competitive rates with a diverse selection of carriers, supported by their multiple 10Gig wave US and European based network. These unique assets gave us the ability to meet and exceed any obstacles we faced last year.”

About BandCon

BandCon is the leading internet infrastructure services provider for companies with media rich web 2.0 sites. The BandCon Content Delivery System(TM) provides internet infrastructure services needed to support a content site at any stage of growth. From its international backbone network, BandCon offers IP Transit, Transport, CDN, Peering and Colocation services that are unmatched in terms of flexibility and scalability. Customers include MySpace, The Weather Channel, NeuLion and Miniclip.com. To learn more, please visit the company website at www.bandcon.com.

About AstoundCom

AstoundCom provides everything from wholesale bandwidth and co-location migration solutions services to technical project management, voice and wireless services, business continuity planning, and more. The company’s consultants have an industry-wide, global view, which is used to counsel clients on data center support services, market and technology trends, price fluctuations, and industry information. AstoundCom partners with more than 40 carriers, which gives clients access to the lowest rates on a full range of voice, data and web hosting, collocation, and mobile phone services. Carrier recommendations are provided at no cost to the client and are free from carrier influence. For more information, visit www.astoundcom.com.

Since you’re already here, we’ll ask you to take a few moments to take a look around:

In the services section you’ll find information about the various ways we can help your company manage the telecom and data center aspects of your business.

• In the Partners section you can read all about the companies we work with to deliver excellent telecom and data center services to you.

• In the About Us section you can read all about what we offer (and you can even see a picture of our fearless leader, Cameron Larson).

• In the Contact Us section you can send us a note or read answers to frequently asked questions about both migration and telecom.

• Right here in the blog section you can keep up with telecom and data center services news.

• And check back soon to see our Clients section, where we will showcase case studies of how our services have helped various clients over the years.

We also want to give a special shout-out to Carlos Perez of Perez Design (http://perezdesign.com/) for all of his help creating our new site. We are grateful to have found a designer who has a fresh style, matched with a professional attitude and exceptional follow through!

While solar panels have not always met the needs of datacenters, the technology is changing—and is beginning to meet datacenters’ huge needs. For instance, Phoenix IT infrastructure provider i/o Data Centers is one of the first to take advantage of newer solar panel technology. In June, the company announced that it is installing photovoltaic panels on the new Phoenix ONE data center’s 11-acre roof. According to the company, not only will the technology generate up to 4.5 megawatts of power, it also includes a thermal storage system that will cool the datacenter for up to six hours a day. So finding a datacenter that uses solar panel technology is certainly a good place to start.

Wind power is also seeing growth in powering datacenters. For instance, Other World Computing, a small ISP and hosting company in Illinois, began relying entirely on an on-site turbine in October—likely making it the first U.S. datacenter to be completely powered by an on-site turbine. You may not find a datacenter that is entirely wind powered, but there are a growing number that use it as part of a green package.

Another way you can make use of wind power for your company’s green initiative is through buying offsets, as the Microsoft Virtual Earth service does. The company’s Boulder, Colo. site purchases offsets from Boulder-based Renewable Choice Energy. This system is clearly not powered directly by wind, but it does allow you to take advantage of green power, while meeting carbon reduction goals.

You could also find a datacenter that has skipped the huge investment of wind or solar power and instead follow the lead of organizations like the Environmental Protection Agency. In November, the agency announced that it had made minor tweaks to its datacenter and had cut the entire agency’s energy output by 20 percent. One change that was made was simply that cables were rearranged and, in turn, airflow was improved.

No matter what other green initiatives your datacenter include, certainly do what Facebook did recently and lease database centers that were built with efficiency in mind. For instance, one of the spaces that Facebook leased features an energy efficiency design that includes slab floors and cool air deposited from above—making the most of nature’s law that cool air descends, while warm air rises.

The good news is that no matter what your company’s overall green goal is, with the choices that innovation and technology now present, a greener datacenter is definitely within reach.

By partnering AstoundCom you truly partner with over 40 major service providers. That means that AstoundCom researches and buys IT and communication services for you, so you don’t need to spend a lot of time shopping around.  There’s no need to fill out forms or remember passwords. You don’t have to waste time setting up accounts. And you can keep your credit card in your pocket.

With AstoundCom your simplify your life: It’s one site, multiple carriers. So go ahead and point, click, and save.