Equinix LD10 – Slough

Colo-X analysis

Since opening in 2015 this facility has changed hands from IO Data Centres to Equinix in 2017 and then in 2019 Equinix announced that 80% or 10MW of the unfitted capacity was to be sold into the new joint venture with GIC, which is aimed at selling large scale solutions to the hyperscale cloud platforms.  As such, we expect LD10, or LD13x as the hyperscale portion of the site is known to be of relatively limited interest to retail colocation buyers, with Equinix putting such clients into LD4, 5, 6 or 7 nearby.

Equinix LD10 facility description

IO opened this site as their first London data centre in the summer of 2015. They also offered a slightly different fit-out approach to traditional large scale data centres by using a modular system offering pods of 18 racks and 180kW. Or, when combining two pods, clients would have 50 racks and 360kW. This was a fairly high density fit out by the London markets’ usual standards.

IO’s UK data centre was believed to have been underpinned by a large US bank, but otherwise the facility was estimated to be only some 10% occupied when Equinix acquired it in early 2017. Under IO the site was designed to offer some 50,000 sq ft of technical space or nearly 10MW of customer power.

Equinix claimed the site would offer some 3,300 cabinets once fully developed under a retail colocation model, but in October 2019 they announced that LD10 was to be sold to their xScale joint venture with GIC, the Government of Singapore sovereign wealth fund. The remaining 80% of LD10 was to be made available as LD13x offering some 10MW of capacity to the large hyperscale buyers that the joint venture is focussed on.

Technical stats