Equinix to Add Fourth Data Center in Zurich

Equinix, Inc. (EQIX) will expand its colocation footprint in Zurich, Switzerland by building a new data center adding 12,920 square feet (1,200 square meters) of high-density data center space. The facility will be the fourth in Zurich for Equinix, which said the new build was in line with its “continuing program of measured global expansion to meet demand.” The ZH4 center is expected to open in the second quarter of 2010 and will add approximately 500 cabinet equivalents.

“With its position as a strategic hub for network service providers and the financial services and media sectors, Zurich is an ideal market for Equinix’s data center colocation and interconnection services,” said Eric Schwartz, president of Equinix in Europe. “By investing in the construction of this new center in a market that has seen few recent data center builds, and at a time when demand continues to outpace supply, Equinix is signaling its strong commitment to this market and to building upon its leadership in the region.”

Interxion Expands Credit Facility

European data center specialist Interxion has raised additional funds to build out its network of data center facilities. The company said today that it has arranged a 45 million Euros ($62.9 million) subordinated credit facility, which complements an existing revolving credit facility of 135 million Euros ($188 million). Interxion added 65,000 square feet of new data center space in 2008.

“This new credit facility is a yet another vote of confidence in the past performance and future prospects of the company,” said Josh Joshi, Interxion’s CFO. “Interxion will continue to maintain its focus on customer-led, profitable growth across Europe in 2009 and beyond.”

The subordinated credit facility was arranged with Fortis Bank (Nederland) N.V., Coöperatieve Rabobank Regio Schiphol U.A. and ING Corporate Investments Mezzanine Fonds B.V.. Interxion recently announced its full-year results for 2008, which showed year-on-year revenue growth of 38 percent to 138.2 million Euros ($192 million).

A 12-Foot Raised Floor?

That’s not a typo. A new data center being built by EDS in England will use an unusual architecture for its free cooling system, treating the entire 12-foot high first floor of the facility as a cold air plenum, with the server cabinets housed on the second floor. The 305,000 square foot facility in Wynyard is being called “Eco 2″ for its energy efficiency features.

The fresh air will be introduced into the plenum by 7-foot high low-velocity fans designed to maintain a consistent air pressure across the entire room/plenum. Slotted vents in the ceiling allow the fresh air to enter the cold aisles of the data center, which are fully-enclosed by a cold-aisle containment system. The containment allows the system to operate with lower airflow rate than typical raised floors in an open hot aisle/cold aisle configuration.

Growth Continues for Interxion

The exterior of an Interxion data center in Copenhagen.

Operating in a tough economy is nothing new for the team at Interxion, the European data center provider. The company launched in 1999 and experienced rapid growth during the dot-com era, but then retooled to survive the lean years that followed. Interxion (pronounced “Inter-action”) slashed staff, centralized its support operations and focused on profitability.

Anthony Foy says that turbulent transition planted the seeds for Interxion’s subsequent success. “One of the things that really helped us was becoming so thin,” said Foy, the Group Managing Director for Interxion. “There’s a real profit motive for being as efficient as you can. We focused on service and set high prices and kept the bar high.”

The company’s focus on efficiency and profit margin growth and helped it expand to its current pan-European network of 24 carrier-neutral data centers in 11 countries, with several more facilities under construction. That has given Interxion the financial strength to continue building data centers during a global credit crunch.

UK Data Centers, via Street View

Here’s an unusual data center tour: Silicon.com has compiled an illustrated tour of some of the UK’s leading data centers as seen by Google Street View. Included are street-level views of the exteriors of major data centers operated by Global Switch, Telehouse, Digital Realty Trust, Telecity and Level 3.

Iceland’s Data Center Ambitions Are Stalled

In early 2007 the government of Iceland began been touting the country as an affordable destination for data center development, citing its abundant supply of geothermal power. At the time, we noted that companies considering Iceland “not forget the source of all that geothermal energy: Iceland sits atop an active volcanic rift.”

Despite its natural advantages, officials in Iceland have unveiled only one data center project. And that was before the events of 2008, when Iceland was hit by an earthquake measuring 6.1 on the Richter scale and became one of the leading casualties of the global financial crisis. Now that lone home-grown project, a $300 million data center planned for Keflavik International Airport, has been delayed. Developer Verne Holdings said construction has been delayed by about 12 months, pushing the launch back to at least mid-2010.

Tata Leases Digital Realty Facility in UK

Tata Communications will lease data center space in a Digital Realty Trust facility in the UK, the two companies said today. Tata Communications, the telecom and hosting arm of the India-based business conglomerate Tata Group, is in the midst of a global expansion of its data center operations.

Tata leased the space through Digital Realty’s Turn-key Datacenter program, which offers customers finished ”plug and play” raised-floor data center space. The turn-key model shifts the data center development costs from the tenant to the landlord, and allows for much quicker deployment than if the customer built a new facility on its own. That’s been an attractive offering in the current economy, with companies seeking to conserve capital.

The turn-key approach also offers companies to expand much more quickly, according to Bernard Geoghegan, Senior Vice President for International Operations at Digital Realty Trust. “With Digital Realty Trust’s Turn-Key Datacentre, Tata Communications is able to utilize the facilities within weeks of signing the lease agreement, far ahead of the normal industry standards,” said Geoghegan. “Because we build more data centres than anyone else in the world, companies that select us as their datacentre partner benefit from our unmatched experience, economies of scale and financial stability.”

Data Center Problem Slows UK Hospitals

Eight hospitals in the UK’s National Health Service found themselves without access to patient records for several hours last week due to a data center failure, according to ComputerWorld UK, which elaborated on an earier report in The Sun. The problem initially affected Ipswich Hospital in Suffolk, and then went on to affect seven other NHS trusts. Sources said the hospitals were unable to access the central iSoft Lorenzo patient administration system until the evening, forcing a return to pen and paper and complicating administrative tasks.

The data center supporting the hospitals was operated by CSC, which declined to comment on the claims that there was a hardware fault, citing commercial confidentiality, but insisted no sensitive patient data was lost and “there was no impact to patient care.” The NHS told Computerworld UK there was “no evidence of risk to patients.”