REDWOOD CITY, Calif., March 2, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Equinix  (NASDAQ: EQIX), the global interconnection and data center company, today announced its 2016 expansion plan.  In addition to its acquisition of Telecity, the company will open four new International Business Exchange™ (IBX®) data centers in Tokyo, Dallas, São Paulo and Sydney, to create more capacity for global companies to connect to their partners, customers and employees. Equinix will invest more than $4.5B in acquisitions and organic growth in 2016 which includes the Telecity purchase price. This adds more than 3M square feet of colocation space in 37 data centers, expanding Equinix's global interconnection platform to nearly 150 data centers by the end of the year.

This expansion builds on the significant global growth Equinix experienced in 2015 in which the company organically grew its footprint with the addition of five new data centers in key economic centers including New York, London, Singapore, Melbourne and Toronto. Since then the company has made two significant acquisitions – Bit-isle in Japan (for $275M) in November 2015 and Telecity Group in EMEA (for $3.8B) which was completed in January 2016. As a result, Equinix has added seven new markets to increase the scale and reach of its data center platform. By providing additional capacity in the coming year, Equinix continues to play a central role in advancing the digital economy's interconnected era, in which businesses are demanding increasing levels of interconnection to accelerate business performance.

An expanding global interconnection platform

• In the coming weeks and months Equinix will bring four new data centers online on four continents, adding over 4,000 new cabinets of capacity. These sites will add nearly 200,000 square feet of new data center space at full build. This brings Equinix's total global footprint to 14 million square feet, increasing the scale of Platform Equinix™ by more than 27 percent year-over-year.
  • Tokyo – Equinix's state-of-the-art Tokyo data center, TY5, will be in close proximity to TY3, near Tokyo's financial district. Together, these two IBX data centers will further strengthen Equinix's financial services ecosystem and offer a full range of premium colocation, interconnection and support services to the greater Tokyo area which is the most populous metropolitan area in the world.
  • Dallas – The Dallas-Fort Worth region has long been a major Internet and peering exchange point for the southern U.S., as well as a major communications hub between North and South America. Equinix's DA7 data center will support global enterprises that require high power density, as well as connectivity to leading NSPs and CSPs in this increasingly strategic market.
  • São Paulo – Equinix's new SP3 data center will address increasing demand for colocation in the State of São Paulo, as Equinix's SP2 facility in Tamboré is nearing capacity. SP3 will double the company's capacity in Brazil, as more businesses outsource IT and leverage the cloud.
  • Sydney – The new SY4 data center will enable Equinix's Australian customers to continue to take advantage of IT innovations including hybrid cloud architectures and help Australian customers safeguard their mission-critical data. Additionally, SY4 will be located near the central business district with access to Southern Cross Cable Head, providing extensive network interconnection in Australia and the Asia-Pacific region.
• As global data centers continue to drive consumption of the cloud, Equinix data centers in these four markets will provide access to the Equinix Cloud Exchange™. Available in 21 markets globally, Cloud Exchange provides access to private, direct connections to many of the leading cloud service providers including: Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Office 365, Google Cloud Platform, SoftLayer, and Oracle Cloud (availability may vary by market).

Growth supports ITs move to the edge

• According to IDC's White Paper entitled "3rd Platform-Enabled Digital Transformation Strategies Require Interconnection-Oriented Architecture¹", the research firm notes that in the 3rd Platform era of technology-driven business innovation, enterprises must leverage cloud, mobility, big data/analytics, and social networking to enable new ways of maintaining and extending their own business relevance. To do so, enterprises need to create and deliver business value at a faster and greater scale, uncovering new sources of business revenue growth, driving operational improvements, and engaging customers in a new, more personalized manner.  In this 3rd Platform era of digital transformation, mission-critical business processes, applications, and supply chains are moving to the edge.
• To optimize the experience, IDC recognizes that the interconnected enterprise is one in which the "network edge" has been defined as an architecture that federates highly dispersed and shifting groups of internal and external users (employees, customers, partners, and suppliers) to dispersed (and multi-sourced) IT systems, applications, and data stores to run business processes, deliver content and business information (systems of record, engagement, insight, and action), and improve customer engagement, employee productivity, and overall business efficiency.
• Equinix has observed a critical business requirement driving demand for interconnection capacity – the need to interconnect people, locations, clouds and data. Interconnection is essential to deliver a rich, ubiquitous user experience with the agility and actionable insight to enable new business models and enhanced productivity.
• To address these business needs companies will need to forge business advantage by collaborating in communities with other enterprises via secure, reliable and instant connections. In anticipation, global enterprises such as Alibaba.com, Wal-Mart, Netflix, and PayPal, are building out their IT infrastructures for maximum connectivity and global scale leveraging Equinix's data centers which now scale to 40 markets throughout the world. With more than 170,000 interconnections already established among its customers, Equinix offers the world's leading global interconnection platform – Platform Equinix.

Quotes

• Melanie Posey, technology market research analyst, IDC:
  "Digital transformation requires 3rd Platform IT and interconnection-oriented architectures. Equinix, the global leader in enabling the interconnected enterprise with 145 datacenters in 40 metropolitan business/financial centers worldwide, offers the type of platform underpinning the flexible environments for innovation, integration, co-development, aggregation, and distribution needed to best leverage 3rd Platform technologies and succeed in the digital economy."
• Steve Smith, president and CEO, Equinix:
  "Global businesses are increasingly realizing that interconnection is essential to deliver a rich, ubiquitous user experience, with the agility and actionable insight to enable new business models and enhanced productivity. This will be even more apparent as businesses locate their data closer to the edge to support the Internet of Things. Our focus on continually expanding our global interconnection platform means that wherever you grow, we'll be there."

Additional Resources

• 3rd Platform-Enabled Digital Transformation Strategies Require Interconnection-Oriented Architecture [analyst report]
• Equinix Expansion Continues With 4 New Data Centers on 4 Continents [blog]
• Equinix Expands Data Center Leadership Position with Close of Telecity Acquisition [press release]
• Equinix Completes Bit-isle Acquisition in Japan [press release]

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 40 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 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's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In particular, see Equinix's recent 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.

Equinix and IBX are registered trademarks of Equinix, Inc.
International Business Exchange is a trademark of Equinix, Inc.

¹ IDC White Paper, sponsored by Equinix, "3rd Platform-Enabled Digital Transformation Strategies Require Interconnection-Oriented Architecture", January 2016

To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/equinix-to-launch-four-new-data-centers-globally-to-further-advance-it-transformation-in-the-interconnected-era-300229339.html

SOURCE Equinix