Equinix Opens Sixth London Data Centre

US data centre provider Equinix has opened its sixth London-serving data centre in Slough.

The LD6 International Business Exchange (IBX) building is claimed to be the UK’s first purpose built Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design (LEED) gold-accredited energy efficient data centre. The opening comes after IBX data centre openings in in New York, Melbourne, Singapore and Toronto.

Access

Equinix said: “Enterprises will have access to major cloud providers including Microsoft Azure, AWS and Google Cloud Platform located in the London Campus via Equinix Cloud Exchange.”

One of the key selling points for LD6 and the rest of the Slough data centres is, according to Equinix, its proximity to the LINX London Internet Exchange, which serves more than 170 financial services companies, with a quarter of European equities trades originating there.

The company also said that LD6 is one of the few Equinix data centres to be built from scratch, allowing more freedom in design and development for boosting its efficiency from an environmental and operational perspective.

One of LD6’s customers is network provider EE. Matt Stagg, a senior manager of network strategy at EE said: “In 2017, 4G will be predominately a video distribution network – globally, a billion gigabytes will go across mobile networks each month. Strategically, we need to have a data centre provider, to connect to the top video providers, that understands this growth, and has a roadmap to support it – Equinix meets this need.”

Channel

Most of Equinix’s business comes from leasing data centre space for big public cloud vendors, with providers such as AWS and Microsoft Azure managing to stake their global cloud grip by channeling their connectivity with the help of Equinix.

But the company is looking to expand its operations in terms of providing services itself, rather than just offering up data centre space. While this could leave the company battling with its own customers, its entrance into the channel by reselling interconnection services rather than just data centre space will add value and boost Equinix’s brand presence.

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