Digital Realty Trust, Oliver’s Yard

Colo-X analysis

Oliver’s Yard data centre is located 100 yards from the Old Street roundabout, in the heart of London’s Shoreditch tech-hub. Originally opened by Globix, the site was then acquired by Telecity in 2006 who quickly deployed the APC Infrastructure enclosures to meet the growing demand for high density colocation solutions. In 2016, Oliver’s Yard became part of DRT (Digital Realty Trust), being one of eight European colocation facilities sold by Equinix post the Telecity take over.

In 2017 the site offers some 450 cabinets and 2.3MW of customer power. It offers a high quality data centre option ideally located for both the City and Silicon Roundabout. Because of the former use of the site by Globix, a fully managed hosting provider, carrier choice is not as great as other London sites of this longevity, but it is certainly reasonable for most corporate users. Colo-X has closed a number of transactions here mostly for general colocation customers seeking the location for to suit their particular circumstances.

Digital Realty Trust Oliver’s Yard facility description

Digital Realty Trust Oliver’s Yard was once home to Companies House, the national business registry for England and Wales. The site was then acquired by US headquartered hosting company Globix in July 2000, who took the lease on the entire nine-storey building of 16,635 sq m, or nearly 180,000 sq ft. Their ambition was to turn the whole building into a fitted-out data centre. (Globix had originally started business in the UK by building the site now known as Prospect House, nearby on New Oxford Street.)

With the dotcom crash shortly to follow, Globix entered into a Chapter 11 restructuring in January 2002 and their ambitions for this site were resized accordingly. However, this was not before preparing much of the infrastructure to support the full data centre build-out. To save capital expenditure and raise revenue, Globix renegotiated their lease – the landlord left them with about one-third of the site, and the rest was re-leased to new tenants. With the Silicon Roundabout only a few yards away, new tenants are typically Shoreditch businesses.

Telecity acquired Globix’s European operations in early 2006. They therefore took over the operation of both Oliver’s Yard and Prospect House, and added a further 550 sq m of capacity to Oliver’s Yard in the first quarter of 2008. In particular, Telecity used the APC Infrastruxture POD product, using enhanced in-row cooling and self-contained pods of cabinets, to offer high-density rack solutions. They are able to offer up to 20kW per cabinet, one of the earliest such high-density solutions in the London data centre market.

In April 2016, US-based Digital Realty Trust acquired the site, along with four other London data centres that were disposed of by Equinix following their takeover of Telecity. Given the initial infrastructure investment by Globix, the site is very well specified (almost over specified) and so offers a reassuring quality message that will doubtless be continued by DRT.

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