Equinix to Build Sixth Data Center in Region
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Friday, September 11, 2009
Data center company Equinix will build a new facility in Ashburn, the company's sixth in the area.
The new data center, scheduled for completion by summer 2010, will be located on the same campus that is home to the Silicon Valley company's other Washington area facilities. Equinix expects it will cost $100 million to build the 152,000-square-foot facility.
Even though most industries have been tightening their belts during the recession, Equinix has benefited from companies moving online as quickly as ever. For many corporate clients, leasing data-storage capacity from a company such as Equinix is far cheaper than building a facility from scratch.
Equinix, a 10-year-old company, has told investors that it expects to bring in revenue of $860 million to $876 million in 2009, up about 25 percent compared with the previous year. Thanks to the nearly universal demand from its consumers and corporate clients that everything, including TV shows and important documents, be accessible online, the company doesn't expect business to slow anytime soon.
"We're right in the intersection of all these trends that are tilting the playing field in our direction," said Steve Smith, Equinix's chief executive.
Equinix isn't just expanding in the Washington area. The company, which has 45 data centers in 10 countries and 18 markets, plans to spend $375 million this year. That's part of a larger company plan to spend $1.4 billion from 2007 to 2010.
Dan Golding, an analyst who follows the data-center industry at Tier 1 Research, said Equinix had grown at a rate fairly typical for its industry.
"The data-center sector is growing very, very rapidly," Golding said. "The only thing preventing explosive growth is the credit crunch," he said.
Equinix expects to run out of capacity at its existing Washington area data centers by the middle of next year. If the company has planned things correctly, Smith said, that's right about when the new facility, with a capacity to handle hundreds of customers, will open its doors.
"You almost can't build fast enough," said Smith, who said that government and telecommunications firms were the company' biggest customers in the Washington area.
Though the new facility will inevitably bring a few new jobs to the area, Smith said that he isn't sure how many new employees his company will eventually need here. "We're not a people-intensive business," he said, "but it will bring new jobs."
