Equinix Opens 50th IBX Data Center in London

Data center operator Equinix announced on Tuesday that it had opened its 50th International Business Exchange data center this week, a major milestone for the company, which has invested $2 billion in expanding operations between 2007 and 2010.

The new facility, located in London, England, and identified by the name LD5, offers 290,625 square feet of gross space, more than doubling the company’s footprint in the London market. It also marks the company’s second-largest facility in Europe, after its FR2 data center in Frankfurt, Germany.

Equinix says the LD5 data center is being built out in phases according to demand. The first phase provides 75,347 square feet of data center space, with capacity for 1,400 cabinets. When fully built, the facility will have capacity for 5,600 cabinets.

The LD5 data center is located on the oustkirts of London, on the same campus as the company’s existing LD4 facility. The two are connected by more than 1,000 dark fiber links, says Equinix, enabling customers to easily expand operations between the two. The LD4 data center, which opened in 2007, is currently operating at more than 90 percent occupancy.

The LD4/5 campus, says the company, is connected to the London Internet Exchange, and is home to Equinix’s financial services offering, in which a community of financial market participants is located in close proximity in order to facilitate low-latency trading. Equinix says the new LD5 space is intended to provide “premium colocation and network exchange services” to customers, particularly those in the financial services space.

"The opening of our 50th premier IBX data center is a massive achievement for the company and is a testament to our team, our services and the value we provide to our customers on a daily basis," said Steve Smith, president and CEO of Equinix, quoted in the press release. "This milestone validates our fundamental strategy to protect and connect the world's most valued information assets and ensures that Equinix will continue to supply leading data center services for businesses now and into the future."

According to the announcement, the LD5 facility was built with a range of energy efficient design choices, including the use of outside-air cooling techniques designed to reduce power consumption, along with N+1 uninterruptable power supplies supporting every cabinet.

The anchor tenant for the new facility is T-Systems, the outsourcing division of Deutsche Telekom, an Equinix customer for many years with installations in IBX data centers in several European locations.