Equinix targets London Slough for new flagship data center
Equinix, Inc. (NASDAQ: EQIX) says it plans to build a new International Business Exchange (IBX) data center at its London Slough campus. The LD7 IBX data center should be open for business during the second quarter of 2019. The company plans to spend approximately $120 million on the construction project, which will create the 12th IBX in the UK.
Including ongoing expansion projects, Equinix estimates its investments in the UK at $1.2 billion. The company says this figure indicates the confidence it has in the expansion potential of the UK market, despite the ongoing Brexit related turmoil. The total includes $387 million Equinix plans to spend this year and next in the UK on such projects as expansion of its LD4, LD9, and LD10 data centers.
LD7 will provide direct software-defined interconnection through the Equinix Cloud Exchange Fabric to more than 1300 businesses, including such service providers as Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Oracle Cloud. With an eye toward clean, efficient use of energy, Equinix says it will build the LD7 data center to LEED gold certified standards. The site will use a chilled water system and an Adiabatic heat rejection system to enable lower energy consumption and a smaller carbon footprint than other facilities of its kind, Equinix asserts.
A recent report listed London and Slough as two of the five largest third-party data center hubs in Europe (see “UK home to two of five biggest European data center campuses; DataCentrePricing.Com report”). "London is one of the most important connection points in the world, and we expect this growth to continue as the city continues to play a crucial role in powering the global digital economy,” commented Russell Poole, managing director UK, Equinix. “LD7 will be one of the most technologically advanced colocation data centers in the world and will be a major addition to our thriving London Slough campus. This latest data center will also act as a sustainability benchmark for future data centers – something we are very passionate about."
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