Equinix, Inc. has announced that it has completed the second phase expansion of its LD6 International Business Exchange™ (IBX®) data center in Slough, London. This new phase further supports businesses expanding in the UK, providing customers with the critical IT infrastructure required to gain competitive advantage.

With $42M of capital investment, the second phase of LD6 will add 1,385 cabinets, bringing the total operational capacity of the data center to 2,770 cabinets. This expansion is also an indicator of Equinix's continued commitment to the UK, where demand for data centers and colocation services in the cloud, enterprise, and financial services sectors continue to grow.

"Platform Equinix has been a cornerstone for the Beeks Financial Cloud — enabling the speed, resilience and reduced latency our customers have come to expect. Our presence in the Equinix's London data centers provides connectivity to all the major networks and cloud service providers, as well as financial services companies. This level of interconnection is what helps a business like Beeks to thrive. It's more than a data center platform — it's a platform for innovation," said Gordon McArthur, CEO, Beeks Financial Cloud.

With the fifth largest GDP by metropolitan area in the world, London is a key player in the global digital economy. Equinix's LD6 campus is one of the fastest-growing in the UK and has been established as a hub for businesses to interconnect in a secure colocation environment.

With more than 90 network service providers and access to a range of transatlantic sub-sea cables, LD6 is one of the busiest network nodes in the UK, and offers latency in the region of 30 milliseconds to New York and 4 milliseconds to Frankfurt. This makes it an optimal high-performance hub for cloud and content service provision.

The facility also houses LINX, one of the world's largest Internet Exchanges, and serves as a virtual financial center for more than 170 financial services companies. A quarter of European equities trades flow through Equinix data centers. 

Following this latest investment, Equinix's LD6 London Slough campus will provide more than 408,000 sq ft (38,000 square meters) of net premium colocation space interconnected by more than 1,000 diverse dark fiber links, increasing scale and resilience. Additionally, with seven data center sites strategically located throughout London, Equinix provides businesses with increased options for business continuity and disaster recovery.

According to a recent report by Gartner entitled, Colocation-Based Interconnection Will Serve as the 'Glue' for Advanced Digital Business Applications, "Digital business is enabled and enhanced through high-speed, secure, low-latency communication among enterprise assets, cloud resources, and an ecosystem of service providers and peers. Architects and IT leaders must consider carrier-neutral data center interconnection as a digital business enabler."

LD6 houses many customers benefiting from Platform Equinix™. Beeks Financial Cloud is a UK-based customer that leverages Platform Equinix across a number of markets, directly connecting to financial market participants, cloud services providers and networks. Originally deployed in LD4, Beeks has continued to expand to other Equinix sites across the globe as its business required more capacity and scale.

Another London customer is CFH Clearing. Part of the CFH Group, the STP trading venue provides sophisticated technology solutions for global clients including banks, brokers and professional traders. The company works with both Beeks and Equinix, relying on Equinix for maximum connectivity and low latency.

With 146 IBX data centers in 40 markets including seven data centers in London (LD1, LD3, LD4, LD5, LD6, LD8, and LD9), Equinix provides customers with even more ways to connect with other businesses across the globe.