Equinix opens £90m London data centre

Equinix, Inc. has opened the doors of its new International Business Exchange™ (IBX®) data center at its London Slough campus. The new £90M high performance data center – named LD7 – forms part of a wider £295M investment from Equinix into the UK’s digital infrastructure throughout 2018/19. The site will provide interconnection and colocation to support businesses with their IT transformation initiatives.

This significant investment in the UK’s digital infrastructure, further supports London’s continued position as a major global financial hub, and one of the leading cities for business, regardless of the outcome of the ongoing negotiations around Britain’s decision to leave the European Union. The move to open this latest data center from Equinix has already been acknowledged by the UK government as a major vote of confidence in the UK economy.

LD7 marks Equinix’s 12^th IBX in the UK and supports the increased demand for interconnection bandwidth – the capacity to directly and securely share data between businesses – from UK enterprises that want to gain a competitive business advantage in the continually evolving digital economy. Each of these data centers are built on Platform Equinix™ which is comprised of more than 200 data centers in 52 markets globally. Including current expansion projects, Equinix will have invested over $1.2 billion to build and expand its presence in the London metro area.

This latest data center from Equinix further substantiates the company’s long-term commitment of using 100% clean and renewable energy, as it has been purposefully designed to have an energy-efficient foundation. As such, Equinix’s LD7 data center will be built to LEED gold certification.

Highlights/ Key Facts

·       Equinix has over 200 sites in 52 markets across the world, enabling companies to conduct business internationally and compete in the global digital economy.

·       The new £90M ($120M) data center forms part of a total £295M ($387M) investment in the UK’s digital economy from Equinix throughout 2018/19. This includes £82M ($108M) in expansion to Equinix’s LD10 data center, £94M ($120M) in expansion at its LD9 data center and £29M ($39M) expansion of its LD4 data center. The investment in expansions at LD9 and LD10 include the development of dedicated space for hyperscale infrastructure to meet demand from cloud service providers.

·       With over 90 network service providers and access to a range of transatlantic cables, the London Slough campus is one of the busiest network nodes in the UK, and offers latency in the region of 30 milliseconds to New York and 4 milliseconds to Frankfurt, making it an ideal high-performance hub for electronic trading, as well as cloud and content service provision.

·       Energy efficiency will be achieved at the site with the aid of an innovative Chilled Water System in combination with an Adiabatic heat rejection system. This will contribute to LD7 having lower energy consumption and a smaller carbon footprint than other facilities of its kind. As a result, the LD7 data center will be built to LEED gold certified standards

·       The new LD7 data center will enable customers to interconnect securely with 1,000+ businesses in London including leading capital markets participants, insurers and electronic payments firms, as well as 200+ network service providers and 275+ cloud and IT service providers. LD7 will add 1,750 cabinets in its initial phase and expand to over 1,625 cabinets at full build.

·       LD7 will also provide direct, secure and dynamic software-defined interconnection through the Equinix Cloud Exchange™ Fabric to over 1,400 businesses including the largest CSPs. Customers can take advantage of scalability, agility and connectivity over a self-service portal or API and, through a single port, can discover and reach anyone at Equinix on demand, locally or across metros.