Confirming that growth trend, the company announced on Wednesday that it would open a new data center in London, responding to strong demand for more space, power and managed IT services in the UK.
The new facility in Slough, Berkshire is part of a $400 million global investment SAVVIS is making into new facilities and its network across Europe, Asia and North America over a two-year period. The company says it expects to open the new London data center during the early fourth quarter of 2008.
As an integral part of its UK expansion plans, SAVVIS says it has chosen to locate the data center outside the M25 and closer to the grid, to overcome technical infrastructure, space and power challenges often associated with central London facilities.
The new data center will cover 36,500 square feet of raised floor space with the capacity to add approximately 30,000 square feet of additional raised floor space in the future and will offer colocation, virtualization, utility computing and managed security services.
Since the facility will have direct connectivity to SAVVIS's data center near Reading and in London's Docklands, SAVVIS says it will be able to provide additional business continuity and disaster recovery for customers who want to duplicate their data in more than one UK location.
"Over the past five years, SAVVIS' European hosting business, predominately managed hosting, has grown at a compound annual rate approaching 60 percent. This new data center will provide sufficient capacity to accommodate the growth requirements of existing and new customers over the next five years," says Richard Warley, international managing director for SAVVIS. "The facility will be an attractive option for those companies who currently require colocation services, but are considering managed hosting and networking solutions with SAVVIS as part of their strategic IT plans."
