European hosting provider plans US datacenter

Despite the cutthroat nature of the hosting business in the United States it looks like European datacenter providers feel that their customers are looking to expand their operations here and will do so using a familiar provider with a US presence.

LeaseWeb, a web hosting provider from the Netherlands, looks to open their first datacenter in the US early in 2011. While the web hosting market in the US is not lacking in players, LeaseWeb, who has over 30,000 existing customers at their five datacenter sin Amsterdam and Brussels, say that they already have pre-signed sales agreements with both new and existing customers to be part of their US launch.

In this period of intense globalization, it makes sense for infrastructure providers to begin to offer their services in the countries where the major target markets are located. And while other European hosting services have begun the move to the US, LeaseWeb seems to be the first to open their own datacenter, rather than partnering with an existing US datacenter provider to offer their services.

LeaseWeb is an existing customer of major US datacenter hardware and software vendors, such as Microsoft, Dell, Juniper, HP and Cisco and will continue those partnerships with their new datacenter. They have stated that their datacenter services will be supported and maintained by their own engineers and technicians, but haven't made it clear if they will be US hires or staff pulled from their existing datacenters.  Given the nature of remote management it would be likely that LeaseWeb will have little trouble integrating their operations management into their existing datacenter model.