Equinix to Extend Interconnection and Data Center Services to Hamburg

Purchase of building will expand Platform Equinix into fourth German metro to support Digital Edge strategy

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Jan 10, 2019, 03:01 ET

REDWOOD CITY, Calif., Jan. 10, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Equinix, Inc. (Nasdaq: EQIX), the global interconnection and data center company, today announced that it has closed a transaction for the purchase of a commercial building at Vierenkamp 1, Hamburg, Germany, from Aspen REG 1. Management GmbH for $11 million (€9 million). Equinix will invest another $25 million (€22 million) to redevelop the space in phase one. The facility, which will be renamed the Equinix HH1 International Business Exchange™ (IBX^®) data center, will extend the company's global interconnection platform, Platform Equinix^®, into a fourth market in Germany and will help meet growing demand for digital infrastructure connectivity throughout Europe. The acquisition was completed on December 28, 2018, and the new site is expected to be open for business in Q3 2019.

Highlights / Key Facts

With a population of more than five million, the Hamburg metro area is the second-largest city in Germany and has a large concentration of multinational enterprises, including large automotive and consumer packaged goods companies. Additionally, the city is home to a growing technology community, including many e-commerce companies which require low latency, increased bandwidth and connectivity to industry-leading networking and cloud services providers.
To meet this demand, Equinix will refurbish the existing two-story industrial building, which is approximately 130,000 square feet (12,000 square meters), and transform the space into an interconnection and carrier-neutral colocation environment. The redevelopment will deliver 375 cabinets in phase one with the ability to expand to 1,875 cabinets at full build.
As a part of their IT transformation, enterprises increasingly require low-latency network connectivity, access to cloud service providers in top global markets and interconnection with customers and partners across their digital supply chain to run their corporate IT. The new HH1 IBX data center will enable Equinix customers to evolve from traditional businesses to "digital businesses" whereby they globally interconnect with people, locations, cloud services and data. Additionally, customers will have the opportunity to operate on an expanded global platform to process, store and distribute larger volumes of latency-sensitive data and applications at the digital edge, closer to end users and local markets.
The new HH1 IBX data center will be strategically located in proximity to the North Sea, which will provide easy access for subsea cable landing stations, as Hamburg is a top interconnection point for cables connecting to Frankfurt. Equinix has won more than 20 subsea cable landing deals in recent years.
Today, Equinix's Germany data centers are business hubs for over 900 companies across nine facilities located in Frankfurt, Munich and Dusseldorf. Equinix in Germany is home to many thriving, diverse business ecosystems, including: financial services, which converge on Equinix to streamline trading and to share time-sensitive information with partners; the world's largest internet exchange, DE-CIX Frankfurt, and the Equinix IX internet exchange platform, as well as the ECIX, NL-IX, KleyRex and DataIX internet exchanges; and leading international companies in the banking, commerce and automotive industries, as well as other global enterprises that use these facilities to gain a presence in Europe's largest national economy.
Equinix previously committed to investing over $150 million (€131 million) in organic expansion of its German data centers for fiscal years 2018-2019.
Today Equinix operates more than 200 IBX data centers in 52 markets, providing customers even more ways to connect with other businesses around the world on Platform Equinix.

Quotes

Eric Schwartz, president, EMEA, Equinix:
"The German economy continues to be a source of strength in Europe, and demand for interconnection continues to rise to meet the IT transformation needs of businesses. By expanding to a fourth market in Germany, Equinix will provide multinational customers with greater choice of where they build their digital edge."

Additional Resources

Equinix to Expand into Germany to Accelerate Global Digital Business [blog]
Equinix Invests $85 Million to Build Fourth Data Center in Singapore [press release]
Equinix Announces Build of New Flagship Data Center in London [press release]
The Successful Cloud-Enabled Enterprise [infopaper]

About Equinix
Equinix, Inc. (Nasdaq: EQIX) connects the world's leading businesses to their customers, employees and partners inside the most-interconnected data centers. In 52 markets across five continents, Equinix is where companies come together to realize new opportunities and accelerate their business, IT and cloud strategies. www.equinix.com.

Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from expectations discussed in such forward-looking statements. Factors that might cause such differences include, but are not limited to, the challenges of acquiring, operating and constructing IBX data centers and developing, deploying and delivering Equinix services; unanticipated costs or difficulties relating to the integration of companies we have acquired or will acquire into Equinix; a failure to receive significant revenue from customers in recently built out or acquired data centers; failure to complete any financing arrangements contemplated from time to time; competition from existing and new competitors; the ability to generate sufficient cash flow or otherwise obtain funds to repay new or outstanding indebtedness; the loss or decline in business from our key customers; and other risks described from time to time in Equinix filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In particular, see recent Equinix quarterly and annual reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, copies of which are available upon request from Equinix. Equinix does not assume any obligation to update the forward-looking information contained in this press release.

SOURCE Equinix, Inc.