Switch & Data Scales Up

Switch and Data, a provider of data center facilities to service providers and enterprises, has expanded one of its key sites in New York City to cope with growing demand for managed services (see Switch & Data Connects NYC).

The vendor, which owns 34 data centers across the U.S, has more than tripled the size of its 60 Hudson Street site in Manhattan. The facility has been expanded from 5,000 to 18,254 square feet. Switch and Data says service providers are looking for more facilities to handle VOIP, multimedia, and storage offerings.

The very first prospect that we’re looking into is several hundred square feet to provide VOIP services,” says Mario Galvez, Switch and Data’s VP of marketing.

Storage service providers are also expanding their offerings, and there's more online gaming. “Certain service providers are supporting these games and looking to get closer to network Points of Presence,” says Ernie Sampera, the company's senior VP of marketing. By being close to the actual network, this gives the service provider the latency needed to support games, he notes.

For many providers, managed services are seen as a potential goldmine (see Managed Security Services Pipe Up). Although Switch and Data won't reveal the identities of its clients, a number of firms, such as AT&T Corp. (NYSE: T) and Equant (NYSE: ENT; Paris: EQU) are seeing growth in this side of their business.Technology as well as demand for new services motivated Switch and Data’s expansion. ”We’re certainly seeing a huge growth in blade server usage [and] that’s driving demand for space and power,” says Galvez. Content providers, in particular, are turning to blades in an attempt to boost their server capacities, he adds.

In an effort to meet demand, Switch and Data has built a new interconnection between its Hudson Street site and another of its data centers on 8th Avenue in New York, which it says offers access to 330 different carrier networks. According to the vendor, this could save customers money by removing the need for them to locate on both sites.

Switch and Data is not the only data center specialist identifying these trends. Last week rival Equinix Inc. (Nasdaq: EQIX) cited managed services and increasing use of blade servers as key drivers behind its decision to open a new data center in Los Angeles (see Equinix Nabs New LA Data Center). And Fibernet Telecom Group (NYSE: FTGX) recently expanded its own facility at 60 Hudson Street (see FiberNet Sells Out Hudson St. ).

— James Rogers, Site Editor, Next-Gen Data Center Forum