(Chapel Hill, N.C.) Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina today announced it has signed an agreement with Fujitsu America, Inc., a global technology services company, under which FAI will purchase the BCBSNC data center, located in Research Triangle Park, and provide a variety of IS support services to BCBSNC. This agreement is expected to provide BCBSNC with business flexibility and significant operational cost savings, as well as offer professional development opportunities for BCBSNC employees in affected business areas. As part of the agreement, Fujitsu will offer positions to approximately 185 BCBSNC employees. (more…)

(Hickory, N.C.) CommScope, Inc., a global leader in infrastructure solutions for communications networks, will have one of its experts speak about intelligent data centers during this month’s Datacenter Dynamics Toronto 2011. David Hall, solutions manager, Enterprise, CommScope, will present on Monday, December 12 on “Can Your Data Center IT Infrastructure Keep Pace with The Rest of Your Business.” (more…)

(Maiden, N.C.) Apple is beginning construction on the “Project Dolphin Solar Farm” for its $1 billion data center that rivals the largest such facilities in the world. The company has been granted a permit to start preparing 171 acres according to news reports. (more…)

(Charlotte, N.C.) Caronet, one of the Southeast’s premier colocation and hosting facilities and managed hosting service providers, has announced that it is expanding its space and power availability to accommodate growth experienced by its east coast data center. The company expands with more than 15,000 square feet of hosting and colocation space supported by significant increases to its power supply and backup units to bring its total data center footprint across three units to more than 40,000 square feet of Tier 3 space.  Caronet’s “green” facility allows it to leverage solar power in providing customers with fairly priced, optimally equipped, environmentally conscious colocation and hosting facilities and managed services. (more…)

(Raleigh, N.C.) Windstream Hosted Solutions, one of the premier providers of enterprise-class managed hosting solutions, today announced it has begun a significant expansion to its Raleigh data center, one which will grow the facility’s usable space by almost 50 percent to 32,000 square feet. The expansion is needed to keep up with the company’s fast-growing customer base and its demands for cloud-based services, such as secure storage. It will enable the placement of at least an additional 365 customer cabinets that provide a combination of co-located and managed hosting services, with an emphasis on the full range of  Windstream Hosted Solutions’ managed and cloud-based offerings.  The expansion is scheduled to be completed by the end of the third quarter and is the third addition to the Raleigh data center in the last five years. (more…)

(Raleigh, N.C.) 6fusion, a provider of utility-metered public, private and hybrid cloud infrastructure management software and services, and Purposeful Clouds Inc., a cloud consulting and enablement firm, today announced a partnership to help value-added resellers (VARs) define, launch and build cloud service offerings. Building a cloud strategy is top of mind for today’s VARs. Analyst firm Gartner predicts cloud services brokerage will represent the single largest revenue growth opportunity in cloud computing through 2015. (more…)

(Raleigh, N.C.) Windstream Hosted Solutions, one of the nation’s premier providers of enterprise-class managed hosting solutions, announced that it has begun hosting Business Empire Consulting’s Inspire™ next-generation online marketing platform at its secure data centers in Raleigh. By doing so, Business Empire said it has solved a major challenge in its continued growth and can better serve its customers nationwide. (more…)

(Fairport, N.Y. and Charlotte, N.C.) PAETEC Holding Corp. (NASDAQ GS: PAET), a nationwide provider of comprehensive communications solutions, announced the launch of an expanded portfolio of cloud-based products and the planned deployment of new data centers coast-to-coast. As part of its overall cloud and data center strategy and leveraging its breadth and depth of experience in the cloud and data center space, PAETEC plans to add 13 data centers coast-to-coast by the end of 2012 to its current set of seven centers which will result in the company operating 20 centers nationwide. Additionally, the company released new cloud-based products and enhanced existing products for businesses including Dedicated Server, Virtual Server, Managed Storage, and Hosted Exchange. Cloud-based services refer to applications being housed, managed, and maintained in highly secure and fault-tolerant data centers, relieving day-to-day responsibilities from IT staffs allowing them to focus on more strategic initiatives. (more…)

(Charlotte, N.C.) Windstream Hosted Solutions, one of the nation’s premier providers of enterprise-class cloud computing and managed hosting solutions, announced today it has opened its third state-of-the-art data center in Charlotte as part of the company’s continued expansion. Windstream now operates three SAS 70 Type II certified facilities within the Charlotte market. The company also operates data centers in Raleigh and Cary, N.C.; Boston, Mass.; Newton, Iowa; State College and Ephrata, Pa.; Jacksonville, Fla.; Atlanta, Ga., and Nashville, Tenn. (more…)

(Raleigh and Forest City, N.C.) Gov. Bev Perdue announced today that Facebook, the world’s leading social networking service connecting more than 500 million people, will locate a multi-million dollar data center near Forest City in Rutherford County. Facebook is receiving $1.4 million in incentives from Rutherford County as well as an economic development grant from the county that could be worth $10 million if Facebook meets investment goals. The facility is expected to create more than 250 construction and mechanical jobs during its 18-month building phase. When construction is completed, the data center will employ around 35-45 full-time and contract workers. (more…)

(Raleigh, N.C.) Windstream Corp. (Nasdaq: WIN) announced today that it has entered into a definitive agreement with ABRY Partners to acquire Hosted Solutions Acquisition, LLC (Hosted Solutions) in an all-cash transaction valued at $310 million. Hosted Solutions, based in Raleigh, N.C., is a leading regional data center and managed hosting provider focused on enterprise-class Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) solutions (managed hosting, managed services, colocation, cloud computing and bandwidth) for small and medium-sized business customers as well as large enterprises. The company serves more than 600 customers and has approximately 125 employees. (more…)

(Raleigh, N.C.) Hosted Solutions, the East Coast’s premier provider of enterprise-class managed hosting solutions, today announced that Global Training Solutions Inc. (GTS), a leading IT training provider and operator of The Ultimate Bootcamp®, has selected Hosted Solutions to provide highly secure colocation service. (more…)