Equinix forms billion dollar joint venture for European data centre market

Equinix has completed the formation of the greater than US$1.0 billion joint venture in the form of a limited liability partnership with GIC, Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund, to develop and operate xScale data centers in Europe. As announced with the signing of the agreement in July, xScale data centers will serve the unique core workload deployment needs of a targeted group of hyperscale companies, including the world’s largest cloud service providers. The facilities will allow these key enablers of digital transformation to streamline their continued growth, while strengthening Equinix’s leadership position in the cloud ecosystem, as enterprises increasingly embrace hybrid multicloud as the IT architecture of choice.

The initial six facilities in the joint venture will be located in the Amsterdam, London (two sites), Frankfurt (two sites) and Paris markets, on some of Equinix’s existing International Business Exchange™ (IBX^®) data center campuses.

The Equinix LD10 IBX facility has been sold to the joint venture. The portion of the facility that has been dedicated to hyperscale deployments has been re-named the LD13x xScale data center and will provide 10 megawatts (MW) of capacity for xScale customers. The balance of the facility, which is dedicated to retail colocation deployments, will be leased by Equinix from the JV and will retain the Equinix LD10 IBX name.

The former Equinix PA8 IBX in Paris, which has also been sold to the joint venture, has been re-named the PA8x xScale data center. The first phase of the facility opened in Q1 2019, and the second and final phase is expected to open in Q4 2019. At full buildout, PA8x is expected to support 14 MW of capacity for xScale customers.

The FR9x xScale data center in Frankfurt will add 10 MW of capacity in Q3 2020 when the initial phase is opened. At full capacity, the facility is expected to support 18 MW of capacity.

The LD11x xScale data center in London will add 10 MW of capacity for hyper scale customers in Q1 2021 when the initial phase is opened. At full capacity, the facility is expected to support 19 MW of capacity.

xScale data centers provide hyperscale companies a differentiated value proposition from existing wholesale data center operators in two key areas:

o   xScale data centers offer access to Equinix’s comprehensive suite of interconnection and edge services. These services tie into the hyperscale companies’ existing access points at Equinix, thereby increasing the speed of connections to their existing and future enterprise customers.

o   xScale data centers are engineered to meet the technical and operational requirements and price points of core hyperscale workload deployments. This enables hyperscale companies to consolidate core and access point deployments into one global provider to streamline and simplify their rapid growth.