Alchemy Plus says the global credit crunch will boost demand for hosted data center services built on the “pay as you go” utility model. The company, a Microsoft partner, has recently launched a utility computing platform and reports strong customer interest.

The plans for the new facility at Inverness Harbour call for a first phase of 20,000 square feet of data center space, with room for two expansion phases of 10,000 square feet apiece. Alchemy Plus says the data center will be supported by up to 100 megawatts of power from two utility feeds, and will incorporate hydro and wind power.

Alchemy Plus says it intends to transmit waste heat from the data center to warm
neighbouring buildings in the Inverness Harbour development including retail units,
offices and a major hotel.

“This development could not be better timed,” said Peter Swanson, Chairman of Alchemy Plus. “Demand for premium data centre space continues to far outstrip
available supply and the current economic downturn is driving a rapid shift towards
‘cloud’ based services which offer greater economy and flexibility.

“Utility computing will revolutionize the way businesses use computers and seriously
cut costs for many companies and public sector organizations,” said Swanson. “All the major players see this as the future of IT delivery and I’m delighted that we in the Highlands are leading the way for the rest of the UK. We want to construct an iconic landmark building for the city that will act as a beacon for others.”

A planning application for the new development is being prepared and envisions the data center being completed by the end of 2010. Alchemy Plus says the center eventually may employ as many as 400 workers.

“This is good news for Inverness,” said Stewart Nicol, Chief Executive of Inverness Chamber of Commerce. “This project will really put the city on the map for developments in information technology. This is a field in which Inverness and the Highlands can excel and we need to take full advantage of the opportunities itoffers.”

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I’ve got a busy schedule of keynotes, presentations from Gartner analysts and meetings with executives in the data center industry. We’ll be bringing you all the highlights from the conference in coming days.

But he also provides a broader context for the hard numbers, defining the “fully burdened cost of power” as the sum of the cost of the power consumed and the cost of both the cooling and power distribution infrastructure: “Since power and infrastructure costs continue to rise while the cost of servers measured in work done per $ continues to fall, it actually is correct to say that the fully burdened cost of power does, or soon will, dominate all other data center costs,” James writes.

James has shared the Excel spreadsheet he used for his calculations, so you can plug in your own numbers. His analysis is also being discussed at O’Reilly Radar.

Remember to track our Data Center Investor channel for performance updates on data center companies. For tracking individual stocks, you can use the “Companies” link in our navigation bar, or just type the company’s ticker symbol into our search box.

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• Design Your Own Virtual Supercomputer (Nov. 11)
• Where Amazon’s Data Centers Are Located (Nov. 18)
• Worker Killed in Accident at UK Data Center Site (Nov. 6 )
• Sprint, Cogent Resume Peering, Keep Arguing (Nov. 2)
• UPS Failure Triggered Friendster Outage (Nov. 17)

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But there are apparently no buyers interested in the company’s money-losing hosting operations, which has 20 employees and offers shared hosting and virtual private servers. The company didn’t provide a current tally on the scope of its hosting business. But as of late 2006, Lycos Europe hosted more than 200,000 web sites, placing it among the top 10 web hosts in Europe, according to Netcraft. 

It’s been a while since I can recall a web hosting operation of substantial size just shutting its doors. It will be interesting to see how the unwinding is managed, and whether Lycos Europe eventually finds someone to assume the hosting accounts, or simply gives customers a drop-dead date by which they must migrate their accounts. 

Lycos Europe’s lineage traces back to the web search engine popular in the mid-1990s, which was bought by Spain’s Terra Networks in 2000. Lycos Europe was part of Terra Lycos until 2004, when it was spun off into a separate company at the same time Lycos Inc. was sold to South Korea’s Daum.

Lycos Europe acquired many of its hosted sites through its purchase of United Domains of Germany in 2004.

The company made headlines in late 2004 when it distributed Make Love Not Spam, a “screensaver that spams the spammers,” using idle computer time to attack sites that had been blacklisted for abusive spamming practices. The campaign, designed to appeal to e-mail users fed up with spam, was widely criticized by the Internet security community, and the site was blocked by major connectivity providers before being discontinued.

The huge crowds for Black Friday and Cyber Monday almost always result in outages for high-profile web sites. The early casualty this year appears to be Sears.com, which is experiencing performance problems Friday morning.

There are also reports of Black Friday performance problems for Microsoft’s Live Cashback site. Keynote Systems reported that the Kohl’s Corp. and Saks Inc. web sites also struggled at times amid heavy web traffic.

Thanksgiving is a time to be mindful of our many blessings, but also to take to heart our opportunity to make a difference in the lives of others. I’m sure we all know people who are struggling amidst this financial crisis, and please be sure to keep them in mind as well. Have a great Thanksgiving!