UAE’s du, Equinix to set up USD80m IBX data center

21 Nov 2012

(MENAFN) Emirates Integrated Telecommunications Company (du) has inked a cooperation deal US data center firm Equinix to set up a carrier-neutral hub in the region for delivering data center and interconnection services to its customers in the Middle East region, Reuters reported.

Equinix said the hub will enable all carriers, content providers, cloud providers, financial service and enterprise customers in the region to colocate critical data infrastructure.

The first phase of the data center is expected to be completed and open for business by January 1, 2013, it added.

Customers of du and Equinix will benefit from close proximity to the UAE and regional market and have the opportunity to connect to more than 4,000 customers across Platform Equinix for du.

Equinix has bought a newly-built mid-sized data centre in Dubai and will invest USD40 million in the project.

Equinix will operate this new International Business Exchange (IBX) data center, which has capacity of 44,000 sq ft and approximately 650 cabinets.

Additionally, du has created the recently announced datamena brand, and expects to invest an equivalent amount to further grow the datamena platform and service portfolio over time.

Datamena constitutes a transit zone, which allows international customers to host and distribute content, and to trade data capacity in a cost effective way. Its services will only be available in the data centers in the alliance, said a senior du official.