Equinix kicks off a $1 billion joint venture to develop and operate xScale datacentres in Europe, bringing about 6 facilities designed to serve the core workload deployment needs of a hyperscale companies.
The project is the result of a limited liability partnership with GIC, the Singapore sovereign wealth fund. It initially involves the creation of facilities in Amsterdam, London (two sites), Frankfurt (two sites) and Paris, with some occupying existing Equinix International Business Exchange (IBX) datacentre campuses.
For instance, the Equinix LD10 IBX facility has been sold to the joint venture, and the portion of the facility dedicated to hyperscale deployments is becoming the LD13x xScale datacentre. It will provide 10MW of capacity for xScale customers. The rest of the facility will be dedicated to retail colocation deployments and retain the Equinix LD10 IBX name.
The former Equinix PA8 IBX facility in Paris has also been sold to the joint venture, and has been renamed the PA8x xScale datacentre. The first phase of the facility opened in Q1 2019, and the final phase is set to open in Q4 2019. Once complete it should support 14MW of capacity. The FR9x xScale datacentre in Frankfurt will add 10MW of capacity in Q3 2020, before reaching a total of 18MW of capacity, while the LD11x xScale datacentre will add 10MW of capacity in Q1 2021.
The xScale datacentres offer a differentiate proposition for hyperscale companies in the shape of access to the Equinix suite of interconnection and edge services. Such services tie into existing Equinix access points, increasing connection speeds for existing and future enterprise customers. Equinix counts the likes of Alibaba Cloud, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and Google Cloud as partners, and Platform Equinix claims the most access points to global cloud service providers.
"The formation of our JV with GIC is a strategic milestone for Equinix as we continue to deepen our relationships with the world's largest cloud and hyperscale companies and help them meet their core workload deployment needs and gain proximity to the thriving business ecosystems available at Equinix," the company says. "Similarly, as today's businesses are increasingly moving to implement hybrid multicloud strategies for their digital infrastructure, Equinix serves as a unique on- and off-ramp to execute that strategy. We look forward to launching similar JVs in other operating regions and believe these efforts will continue to further differentiate Equinix as the trusted center of a cloud-first world."
Go Equinix and GIC Complete Formation of Greater than US$1.0 Billion European Data Center Joint Venture
