Terremark snubs London for main European datacentre

Verizon has decided to locate its main European Terremark datacentre in Amsterdam, rather than London, due to the difficulty of getting power and affordable space in the UK capital.

Verizon has chosen Amsterdam over London to locate its main European Terremark datacentre. Photo credit: Terremark

Though Verizon subsidiary Terremark has datacentres across Europe, it was not able to get enough electricity at the right price to locate its 136,701 square-foot European facility in London, so it opted for Amsterdam instead, Herman Oggel, president of its European business unit, said on Wednesday.

The Amsterdam-based Network Access Point (NAP) facility will be Terremark's "access point into Europe," Oggel said. "The choice was essentially between London and Amsterdam, but London is pretty full and... there is no power; [in] Amsterdam there is plenty of power."

The datacentre is expected to consume around 46 megawatts when at full stretch. Its first stage, which opened on Thursday, has 6MW available now, and 40MW has been secured from local utility providers for expansion.

The total of 46MW sits at the high end of power consumed by datacentres — Rackspace's UK cloud runs from a facility in Slough that consumes 4.4MW. Telecity has a facility in the Docklands that, after expansion, will draw 29MW, and Microsoft's Dublin datacentre, which supports its cloud and online Office365 services, sucks in 22.2MW.

"We spent quite a bit of time looking at premises in and around London," Oggel said. "We found [it is] much more economically beneficial building in Amsterdam."

Verizon acquired Terremark and its 50 or so datacentres in January. Terremark has other NAPs across the world, with a focus on areas with good transnational fibre connectivity, including ones in Miami, Sao Paulo and Hong Kong.

The Amsterdam NAP is located within a private fibre ring operated by Schipol Telematics that connects through to one of the world's largest internet exchanges, AMS-IX. Terremark expects to gain business from the 500 or so other companies hosted on the Telematics fibre network as it is the only datacentre "behind the gates", Oggel said. Companies there include Google Ireland, Akamai, Yahoo and Microsoft.

Terremark has a small carrier-neutral UK datacentre in London, which provides connectivity through to a range of fibre networks. However, the Amsterdam NAP will have more capacity, better fibre connections and greater security than other European Terremark datacentres, Oggel said. Verizon also provides cloud services from UK-based datacentres via Verizon Business Services.