Photobucket, the Internet's largest image hosting service, said today that it is doubling its data center space in a Denver area facility operated by Switch and Data. Photobucket leases colocation space in the data center in Englewood, Colo., and uses Switch and Data's power, cooling and interconnection services.
"As users continue to add more digital media on Photobucket, the additional hardware requirements increase our need for space, power, cooling, and bandwidth," said Darren Crystal, CTO and co-founder, Photobucket. "Switch and Data has been our data center partner since 2005 and their service, security and reliability made it an easy decision to expand our presence at their Denver colocation site."
The expansion is the most recent illustration of the impact of social networks on demand for data center services. Photobucket provides storage for close to 40 million users who use the service to link personal photos, graphics, slideshows and videos to their profiles on social netwokring sites including MySpace, Facebook, Friendster, Blogger and Xanga. Each day more than 7 million personal photos, graphics and videos are uploaded to Photobucket.
"Photobucket's continued growth epitomizes how social networking is driving demand for digital content delivery," said Ali Marashi, CTO for Switch and Data. "Switch and Data's interconnection services enable companies like Photobucket to expand quickly while reliably and cost-effectively delivering content to their partners and customers."
The Englewood Switch and Data site is one of 33 data centers the company operates in North America, and provides a carrier-neutral facility where tenants can connect with network providers as Cogent, Level (3), OnFiber and Qwest.