Equinix has closed a transaction for the purchase of IO UK’s data centre operating business in Slough, UK. The facility, which will be renamed LD10, is in close proximity to Equinix’s existing Slough data centre campus and will help meet growing demand for digital infrastructure connectivity in the UK and Europe. IO UK’s facility is a development phase asset, which opened for business in 2015. For the period to December 31, 2015, which is the last fully reported financial period, IO UK generated revenues of approximately $1.4 million. The agreement was signed on January 7, 2017 and the acquisition was completed on February 3, 2017.
The UK is a global leader in cross-border connectivity. According to a new report by TechUK, the UK accounts for 11.5% of global cross-border data flows in 2015— compared with 3.9% of global GDP and 0.9% of global population. Cross-border data flows for the UK increased 28 times between 2005 and 2015 and are expected to grow another five times through 2021. LD10 will be the latest UK data centre asset on Equinix’s global interconnection platform which will support this increase in data traffic and facilitate the movement of it worldwide.
The LD10 International Business Exchange (IBX) data centre will be tethered to the other data centres (LD4, LD5, LD6) on the Equinix Slough campus, enabling customers to easily interconnect with one another across business ecosystems for maximum collaboration across digital supply chains. The Slough campus also offers low-latency connectivity to key markets from London such as 30 milliseconds to New York and 4 milliseconds to Frankfurt.
LD10 will add approximately 350 cabinets of sold capacity and a total co-location space of approximately 3,340 cabs once the facility is completely built out. The data centre currently has a customer mix that maps closely to Equinix’s existing base including financial services, enterprise, and networks.
