Equinix unveiled a plan for another phase of global expansion Wednesday. The data center colocation and interconnection giant will launch four new data centers across four continents in the coming months.
The new facilities in Dallas, São Paulo, Tokyo, and Sydney will add about 200,000 square feet of data center space total, or new capacity for about 4,000 server cabinets. Once the four sites are fully built out, Equinix’s global footprint will reach 14 million square feet of data center space.
The Redwood City, California-based company remains in aggressive expansion mode, following two major data center provider acquisitions last year – Telecity Group in Europe and Bit-isle in Japan – and the announcement of a big new data center construction project in Northern Virginia.
The company is courting cloud service providers, both Infrastructure-as-a-Service and Software-as-a-Service, and enterprise data center users that want to use cloud services. Equinix is reeling enterprises into its data centers by offering them access to a variety of cloud providers and the ability to connect to them using direct, private network links, bypassing the public internet.
Equinix’s latest global expansion, market by market:
- Tokyo: TY5 will be close to Equinix’s existing TY3 data center near Tokyo’s financial district. Both facilities are aimed at financial services customers.
- Dallas: One of the hottest data center markets in the US, Dallas-Fort Worth is a key network interconnection hub. Dallas is the heart of the internet in the south of US and an important gateway to Latin and South America. Equinix’s DA7 data center will primarily serve enterprise and telecommunications companies.
- São Paulo: Equinix’s SP2 data center here is almost full, and the upcoming SP3 facility will almost double its capacity in the market. Brazil is a growing IT outsourcing market, where more and more companies use colocation and cloud services.
- Sydney: The new SY4 data center in Sydney will be near the city’s central business district and provide access to Southern Cross Cable Head, a submarine cable system that interconnects Australia and other markets in the Asia-Pacific region.
In a statement, Equinix president and CEO Stephen Smith said global businesses were increasingly relying on interconnection to provide rich user experience everywhere around the world. These trends will only accelerate as more data is stored in edge markets to support the Internet of Things.
“Our focus on continually expanding our global interconnection platform means that wherever you grow, we’ll be there,” Smith said.
