Equinix, a provider of global data centre services, will open its eighth International Business Exchange (IBX) data centre in the New York metropolitan area and plans to expand its IBX data centres in Chicago, Illinois, and Frankfurt, Germany.
The company will invest approximately $140m in its new New York metro area IBX data centre, which is scheduled to open in the second quarter of 2012 and will primarily support the growth of Equinix’s financial ecosystem.
The company said that the first phase will add approximately 156,000 gross sq.ft. of space and 2,200 cabinet equivalents to Platform Equinix in the New York area, with room for additional expansions that would bring the total capacity to approximately 380,000 gross sq.ft. of space and 7,100 cabinet equivalents.
In addition, Equinix is investing approximately $30m to expand its Chicago-3 IBX (CH3) and approximately $70m to expand its Frankfurt-2 IBX (FR2).
The CH3 expansion will add approximately 19,000 sq.ft. of colocation space and 600 cabinet equivalents, and is scheduled to open in the fourth quarter of 2011.
The FR2 expansion, which is the third phase of expansions in this data centre, will add approximately 102,000 gross sq.ft. of space and 1,900 cabinet equivalents when completed in 2012.
The initial build-out of this expansion, which will add approximately 480 cabinets, is scheduled for completion in the fourth quarter of 2011.
Equinix president and chief executive officer Steve Smith said the three business, financial and communications centres are critical markets for many of their customers, particularly financial and media companies, enterprises and network providers who rely on Platform Equinix to connect to partner and customer ecosystems and improve application performance.
"We continue to experience strong demand for colocation and interconnection services in these markets. The planned expansions are in response to this demand and will enable our customers to grow their businesses in these markets and globally," Smith said.
