Equinix Expands Data Center Space in New York and Frankfurt

Increased demand from Wall Street firms driving colocation provider to add square footage in 10 markets.

Equinix, a provider of global data center services, today announced the purchase and acquisition of a 130,000 square foot data center in Frankfurt, Germany, and the build out of the third phase of the company's New York-4 International Business Exchange data center in Secaucus, N.J. All told, Equinix is expanding in 10 of the 18 markets in which it operates due to increased demand for hosting services near the major exchanges; an expansion of a New York facility that opened two months ago is now more than 60% booked, Equinix says.

Equinix is buying the site selected for the Frankfurt expansion for $30 million. An existing data center formerly operated by Exodus Communications, the FR4 IBX center will have a total capacity of approximately 3,300 cabinet equivalents at full build out and 107,000 square feet of net data center and business continuity space. Equinix will build out the center in multiple phases, with the first phase expected to open in November 2009, adding approximately 1,700 cabinet equivalents. Equinix will invest up to $10 million in the first phase to upgrade the facility.

The $100 million Phase III expansion of Equinix's NY4 center will add 1,250 sellable cabinets and represents the final phase of expansion to the 340,000 square foot center. Upon completion of this expansion, the NY4 center will have a total of 4,050 cabinet equivalents at the opening of Phase III, expected in mid-2010. The addition of Phase III makes NY4 the largest data center operated by Equinix globally.

As New York and Frankfurt represent two major global trading hubs, Equinix has seen significant growth in both markets for Equinix Financial eXchange, a community of execution venues, buy and sell side firms, and technology utilities that have located at Equinix's high-performance data centers. At Equinix, these companies can directly exchange data within the same physical location with strategic partners, customers and vendors. They also have access to data center services and network connectivity providers. Recent companies joining Equinix Financial eXchange include Chi-X Europe, Deutsche Boerse, NYSE Liffe and 7ticks in Frankfurt, and the Boston Options Exchange, Chicago Board Options Exchange, The International Securities Exchange and Fixnetix in New York.

"New York and Frankfurt continue to be strong markets for colocation and interconnection services, with significant growth from the enterprise, network and financial services industry," said Steve Smith, president and CEO of Equinix. "Financial market participants rely on Equinix's existing community of financial trading companies and electronic trading networks for low-latency order flow and trading."

With the addition of the new FR4 center, Equinix will have a total of 720,000 square feet of gross data center space across four different IBX centers in the Frankfurt market. The FR4 center will be located on a seven-acre campus, part of which is available for future development. It will be directly tethered to Equinix's three other centers in the Frankfurt market, enabling customers to interconnect between the four locations as if they were in the same building.

The NY4 center is Equinix's fourth New York area IBX center, all of which are directly linked through redundant dark fiber links managed by Equinix. The $95 million first phase of the NY4 center was opened in November 2007 and is currently over 95% booked. The $82 million second phase of the center, which opened in May 2009, is over 60% booked or reserved by customers.