A Fortune 100 financial services company is the first customer for Digital Realty Trust's POD Architecture Services, the company's new service to design and build data centers for enterprise clients.
Digital Realty (DLR) will manage the construction of 30,000 square feet of raised floor data center space, which will be owned and operated by the customer, who was not identified. The project is underway and projected completion date is summer 2010.
"The value proposition for customers is clear: by using our POD Architecture Services the customer is able to complete large data center projects, faster, more cost effectively and with lower risk than if they take a purely do-it-yourself approach," said Chris Crosby, Senior Vice President, Corporate Development, at Digital Realty Trust. "When companies collaborate with us on their data center projects, they can save as much as tens of millions of dollars and months or even years by utilizing our supply chain, design and construction expertise, and other proprietary resources.
"We are continuing to receive a very positive response from the market for this service," Crosby added. "It has a strong value proposition for companies that want to reduce the complexity and cost of their data center projects."
Digital Realty (DLR) has been a pioneer in building data centers faster and cheaper through the “industrialization” of data center design. The company, which operates 13 million square feet of data center space, has been able to reduce costs and streamline construction using standard components and repeatable design concepts and leveraging its buying power with suppliers.
The company has refined its development process building more than 1.2 million square feet of space for its Turn-Key Datacenter program, which delivers finished raised-floor technical space for clients including Facebook, Savvis, IBM, EDS, CSC and Yahoo.
Features of Digital Realty Trust’s fee-based POD Architecture Services include:
- The ability to license Digital Realty Trust’s Turn-Key Datacenter design package, including its proprietary Design Engineering Guidelines, schematics, one-lines, BOMs, project/site basis and airflow modeling.
- Access to Digital Realty Trust’s supply chain for procuring data center components with “significant pricing advantages” and prompt delivery through Digital Realty Trust’s vendor partnerships.
- Digital Realty Trust’s proprietary Gating Process that provides enterprises with a series of sign offs and checks that give them complete control of the program, with transparency at key stages of the project – “from scope and schematic through commissioning and completion.”
- The ability to leverage Digital Realty Trust’s construction management process, including negotiation of contracts, coordination with contractors and oversight of commissioning procedures.
