Colo provider moving into the wholesale data centre market
Gyron have announced today a new 8MW Slough based facility underwritten by a new customer taking a multi-megawatt dual site deal in both Slough and the already announced new 8MW Maylands Hemel Hempstead site. Gyron Maylands is due online in Q4 2012 with the previously announced first customer, Adobe, taking 1MW whilst Slough will open in March 2013.
It is fascinating to hear that Gyron’s as yet unnamed new customer is signing at 10 year leasehold contract and Robin Balen, Gyron MD confirmed to us that their primary focus in both Maylands and Slough ( or “Slough Ajax” as it is being called) is to focus on larger size deals as opposed to racks, on longer term contracts, thus the first example we’re aware of a colocation provider moving into the wholesale market in complete contrast to the main trend Colo-X has oft written about of late of wholesale operators becoming more and more like colocation providers. Balen reckons the “sweet spot” for Ajax and Mayland data centres will be 200kW upwards with colocation customers being steered towards their existing Centro facility in Hemel.
Balen believes that customers are buying from Gyron on the basis of both competitive wholesale pricing as well as quality, with Gyron offering what the company believes is a true Tier4 standard across both sites and certainly the pricing we discussed today would suggest their retail colocation product is very much being compared with the large international colocation providers as opposed to the numerous and smaller start ups now appearing in the market around London; in other words they are selling on the basis of quality and not price alone.
The three sites will bring some 19MW of capacity under the Gyron brand, with 25% of Maylands now sold and the new customer at Slough Ajax underpinning the development of this new site. All locations are linked together “we have dark fibre between both Centro and Maylands in Hemel” said Balen, “so clients consider them to be one location from a network perspective and we’ve got diversely routed dark fibre from Geo between Hemel and Slough being put into place”.
With Infinity’s new Slough site due to open later in 2012 and still plenty of capacity in Equinix’s LD5 facility Slough should be able to offer quite a wide range of options for data centre customers seeking an alternative to the Central London market; as ever Colo-X is well placed to help users contrast and compare the growing range of options both in Slough or other the ever increasing number of alternative data centre locations around the M25.