December 15, 2003
Changes for Atlanta Site
MetroNexus is looking at alternate uses for at least part of its 1 million square foot MetroNexus Atlanta telecom building. The options for the site may be expanding, as the shrinking pool of land for residential development in Atlanta has builders eyeing open space in the industrial corridor that includes the MetroNexus site.
"We'll continue to earmark a piece of the building for (data center) purposes, because we've installed a huge amount of power and fiber," Alex Twining, president of MetroNexus, said in the AJC article. "That raises the question of what to do with the rest of the building." Office is a possibility, but interest in residential development also raises the prospect that retail might succeed at the location.
The MetroNexus building, located at 1033 Jefferson Street, was constructed by Sears in 1954 as the company's southeast distribution center. An $80 million capital investment by MetroNexus and CoreLocation transformed the site into a mission-critical facility. In 2001 Sprint leased 100,000 square feet at the building as part of its expansion into the hosting and colocation sector. In June Sprint said the Atlanta center was among those it would be closing as it withdrew from the US hosting market.
December 04, 2003
Breakthrough for Navisite
It's been a breakthrough week for NaviSite, which has been among the most aggressive acquirers of distressed hosting assets in the past two years. The company's faith in the long-term outlook for managed hosting was rewarded with a major expansion of a government contract and a big pop in its stock price.
Back on Nov. 24, shares of the Andover, Mass. provider were trading at $5.07 a share. The next day, the company announced that the New York State Department of Labor is adding $52 million to its existing contract with NaviSite's ClearBlue Technologies Management unit. Navisite provides the state with development and hosting services for America's Job Bank, a labor exchange network that links employers and job seekers.
NaviSite shares jumped to $7 that day, and by Monday traded as high as $9.97 a share before closing today at $8.60. Back in April you could bought shares for $1.25.
NaviSite is the primary operating unit of the US hosting assets controlled by Unicorn Holdings, whose principals founded Global Switch. In the past 18 months, the company has bought the assets of COLO.COM, Applied Theory, NaviSite, Avasta, Conxion and Interliant.
America's Job Bank was among the clients acquired from Applied Theory. The site currently has more than 600,000 resumes posted and 960,000 job openings for government and private sector jobs, and gets 5.5 million hits per week. The new commitment amends its existing five-year, $83 million hosting and services contract, by providing up to an additional $52 million to meet the projected contract needs until the expiration of the contract in 2005.