Virtus Data Centres has embarked upon one of the biggest construction undertakings of any operator in Europe, with the simultaneous construction of five additional data centres across its London sites.
This expansion aims to meet ever-growing customer demand for flexible, high quality and well-connected colocation space at scale in London.
During the next two years, Virtus, backed by global heavyweight ST Telemedia Global Data Centres (STT GDC), is committing over £500m to the launch of the five new data centres in the London market, and the completion of its existing four live sites in Slough, Hayes and Enfield.
The five new sites, which go live in 2019 and 2020, will add 76MW to Virtus’ London portfolio, doubling the total portfolio size to 145MW.
Virtus is launching three new sites in the Slough Campus: LONDON3, LONDON9 and LONDON10, delivering 36MW between them to add to its LONDON4 data centre.
This will bring the total Virtus Slough Campus to 63MW, the largest on the Slough Estate. LONDON3, which completed its fit out in December 2018, is already more than 70% contracted.
LONDON9 and LONDON10 will go live in 2019 and 2020 and have anchor tenants already contracted.
In Virtus’ Stockley Park Campus, the accelerated delivery programme of LONDON6 and LONDON7 follows the successful launch of LONDON5, one of the most advanced data centre facilities in the UK. LONDON5, which went live in July 2018, offers 24MW of IT load, of which over 75% is now sold.
LONDON6 and LONDON7 will deliver an additional 40MW of data centre space on the Stockley Park Campus, providing flexible, scalable and highly connected colocation provision to hyperscale and enterprise clients. They will come on-line in 2019 and 2020.
When complete, the Stockley Park campus will deliver 80MW of power across four data centres which total 32,000 sqm of IT space connected by high-count fibre cables from all of the leading fibre owners and operators.
Importantly, the campus is located on top of the UK’s lowest latency fibre between the City and Slough, making it attractive to financial clients as well as hyperscalers who are looking for flexible, future-proofed expansion capabilities.
Virtus has a strong track record in harnessing technology innovation for sustainable and environmentally friendly construction. These data centres will be designed to be sympathetic to their surroundings and include the adoption of living exterior walls.
In addition, the data centres are liquid-cooling ready for densities beyond the 40kW per rack capability that Virtus already offers.
Neil Cresswell, CEO of Virtus Data Centres commented, “Virtus and our global platform partners, ST Telemedia Global Data Centres and GDS are leading the market in providing our customers flexible, high quality colocation at scale.
“Our enterprise and cloud customers have capacity and speed to market challenges in key markets like London.
“Our ability to deliver large amounts of capacity, faster and at a lower cost than other operators is solving these issues for them. We believe this scale and speed are two key factors which led Virtus to achieve over 50% market share in London in 2018.
“It’s critical that we continue building data centres near existing footprints in a campus format, with huge scale and on dense existing fibre routes, to help serve our customers better in this fast-growing market.”
Bruno Lopez, group CEO of ST Telemedia Global Data Centres added, “As one of the leading financial capitals of the world and a major hub for business activities in Europe, the UK data centre market has been growing at a robust pace over the last few years.
“Virtus’ ability to add capacity on a large scale in the UK is part of STT GDC’s continuing investment to best serve the digital infrastructure needs of customers and provide them with the flexibility and scalability required for their business plans.
“We are confident that we will be able to help Virtus build on the success of its UK operations and continue to offer one of the leading and fastest-growing data centre platforms in the country.”
Graham Stuart, minister for investment at the Department for International Trade said, “I’m delighted to welcome this substantial investment of £500m by ST Telemedia Global Data Centres and Virtus Data Centres into their UK operations, which will generate highly-skilled jobs at sites across the Greater London area.
“Big data is a significant economic opportunity in the UK, as Virtus has shown, with this latest expansion following the opening of its Stockley Park campus just over six months ago.
“I’m sure the business will continue to go from strength-to-strength, and the Department for International Trade will be on hand to support in any way possible.”
This news adds to a successful 2018 for Virtus. The company has moved into the position of the third largest colocation operator and the UK’s largest operator in London, the world’s third most established colocation market.
