Equinix Opens London LD7

Equinix has opened its new International Business Exchange (IBX) data center LD7 at its London Slough campus. This new £90 million ($120m) facility is the company’s 12th data center in the UK.

LD7 offers space for 1,750 cabinets, and at full build will accommodate 2,650 cabinets. The new site is developed to use a chilled water cooling system, in combination with adiabatic pre-cooling, and is built to LEED Gold standard. This heightens Equinix’s commitment to using 100% green and renewable energy.

“We are still seeing significant customer demand in London, as enterprises look to increase their business offering through implementing IT infrastructures that are able to keep pace with the continually evolving digital landscape,” said Russell Poole, managing director UK, Equinix.  

Slough which is on the outskirts of London, hosts more data centers than any other region in the UK and is served by over 90 network service providers with access to a range of transatlantic cables.

Equinix Slough campus is one of the high-traffic network nodes in the UK, and offers latency of about 30 milliseconds to New York and 4 milliseconds to Frankfurt.

“London has maintained its position as one of the most important connection points in the world, despite the ongoing Brexit negotiations, and this new data center will be a welcome addition to our burgeoning London Slough campus, whilst also supporting the rollout of 5G in the UK,” said Poole.

LD7 £90 million is a part of Equinix £295 million investment plan in the UK’s digital economy throughout 2018/2019 as announced last year. Others include £82 million to expand Equinix’s LD10 data center, £94 million for the expansion of LD9 data center and a £29 million expansion of the company’s LD4 data center.

“Equinix’s investment reflects the growing demand for digital financial services in the City of London, and is a vote of confidence in its future as the world’s premier financial hub. This is exactly where we want to be heading,” said Theresa May, UK Prime Minister – during the announcement of Equinix investment plan last year.

LD7 will also provide software-defined interconnection through the Equinix Cloud Exchange Fabric to over 1,400 businesses including the large scale CSPs.

The company added that it is set to raise the bar for sustainability in the data center industry with LD7.