The acquisition of Globix Holdings (UK) Ltd brings London-based company two more data centers in its home city, a customer list comprising of around 400, mainly in enterprise rather than ISP or telco, and a small network with PoPs in Amsterdam, Frankfurt, and Paris, all of which are cities where TeleCityRedbus has data centers.

The UK company, which operates a total of 16 data centers across seven European countries, has touted its carrier-neutral status as enabling it to offer a variety of connectivity offerings, since several carriers have pulled fiber to its facilities. Its head of corporate communications James Tyler said that stance will remain unchanged, and the network assets will serve instead to underscore the company’s portfolio of managed IP services.

He said the main thrust of the Globix deal, beyond additional data center capacity in London, is that Globix has not only been successful in developing an enterprise customer base that includes LloydsTSB and eBookers, but has also been able to sell managed services to the majority of them, which is very much where we want to go, said Tyler. Globix offers managed services such as media streaming, DDos mitigation, application management, backup services, and network connectivity.

TeleCityRedbus is the result of the two co-lo players contained in its name, and CEO Mike Tobin has made no bones about his desire to participate in further consolidation in the European market, driving up prices until they reach US levels. Neither is it the only player engaged in expansion in the European market. Interxion Carrier Hotels BV, the number two in Europe behind TeleCityRedbus, and IXEurope Plc, the number five, are both adding capacity.

Julian King, commercial director at The Global Switch Ltd Partnership, which ranks as the number three, said his company is not selling rackspace, but rather real estate into corporate customers. However, he did acknowledge that in common with the co-lo players, his company had recently seen a change in the market. My square foot pricing has gone up over the last 18 months, he said. There were lots of distressed assets, but today the [London] market’s undersupplied and pricing has reached replacement cost level, i.e. what it would cost you if you had to build a new one.