The £90 million data centre – called LD7 – is part of a larger £295 million investment announced by Equinix into the UK’s digital infrastructure throughout 2018/2019. The plans were initially announced back in November, with Prime Minister Theresa May calling the plan “a vote of confidence in its [London] future as the world’s premier financial hub”.
LD7 is Equinix’s 12th IBX in the UK and supports the growing need for interconnection bandwidth, which provides the capacity to directly and securely share data between businesses, from UK enterprises that want to gain a competitive business advantage in the continually evolving digital economy.
“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 (pictured), managing director UK, Equinix. “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 centre will be a welcome addition to our burgeoning London Slough campus, whilst also supporting the rollout of 5G in the UK. As one of the most technologically advanced data centres in the world, LD7 is also set to raise the bar for sustainability in the data centre industry, which is very important to us.”
The new site has been designed to have an energy efficient foundation and underscores Equinix’s commitment to using 100% green and renewable energy. The facility has also been built to LEED gold certification.
With over 90 network service providers and access to a range of transatlantic cables, the London Slough campus is one of the busiest network nodes in the UK, and offers latency in the region of 30ms to New York and 4ms to Frankfurt.
LD7 will also provide software-defined interconnection through the Equinix Cloud Exchange Fabric to over 1,400 businesses including the large scale CSPs.
