US based interconnection firm Equinix have today announced the opening of its new International Business Exchange (IBX) data center in Amsterdam, Holland. The eight-floor complex, officially dubbed AM4, has been estimated to have cost the company around USD 190 million.
A close inspection of the layout of the data center indicates that it will initially house 1550 server cabinets, with future expansion phases potentially elevating that number to 4200 cabinets and a total usable floor space of 124,00 square feet. According to Equinix, the location of AM4, at the Amsterdam Science Park, makes it highly attractive to customers given the park’s reputation as a prime cloud hotspot in Europe.
AM4 will grant European enterprises access to the wide array of services offered by Equinix’s portfolio of cloud partners, which include Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, Google, Oracle and IBM. Furthermore, customers will also have direct network connectivity to the AMS-IX and NL-IX business exchanges.
President of Equinix EMEA, Eric Schwartz, had this to say at the data center’s inauguration ceremony:
Amsterdam has long been a key digital gateway and a significant piece of Equinix’s global data center footprint. Businesses are increasingly looking for network-rich locations that have cloud connectivity but are also located in close proximity to end users.
By moving IT to these sort of environments, businesses create a digital edge that increases performance and end-user experience, but also allows them to adapt to meet future needs. The addition of AM4 gives these businesses yet another way to interconnect in this key market.
AM4 will become the second large scale data center owned and operated by Equinix in The Netherlands.