PART II GLOBALIZATION OF EDGECONNEX
When we were looking at market expansions in 2021, we saw ECX investment in Asia as a priority. We began the year by launching a joint venture in India with the Adani group, forming AdaniConneX with plans to build out a 1GW platform of data centers across the country. Next we opened our APAC headquarters in Singapore and began building out our regional leadership team. Lastly, we concluded the year by making a strategic investment in Chayora, which gives us immediate capability in the Chinese market.
A key differentiator for EdgeConneX has always been bringing the data center to where our customers need capacity, from hyperlocal edge facilities to hyperscale campuses. We give the customers what they want, where they want it, and when they want it. That is a fundamental change in the data center model that we have pioneered—it is what gives our customers an edge, both literally and figuratively.
We put the data center where the content and the broadband networks need it to be—close to aggregations points in those markets. Same rules apply to cloud on-ramps, gaming applications and other latency sensitive workloads that need distributed architectures in close proximity to end users. Meanwhile, that location sensitivity applies not just at the edge, but also at the core. While latency might not matter as much for hyperscale deployments, proximate capacity delivered economically and on-time, specifically where the customer wants it, matters to the customer as well. Providing this hyperlocal to hyperscale data center offering as an end-to-end solution that can also be managed remotely from a single pane of glass is a very compelling solution for customers.
With that context, and the backing of EQT, one of the world’s largest infrastructure funds, EdgeConneX’s focus has been to rapidly build out its global footprint. This year in the Americas, we doubled our footprint in Latin America and are expanding our capacity across six markets in North America. In EMEA, we are expanding significantly our hyperscale footprints in both Amsterdam and Warsaw. We opened our newest data center in Barcelona, announced plans to enter the Brussels market, and acquired Global Data Center (GDC), a data center operator in Tel Aviv, Israel. Lastly, in Asia, we entered the India and China markets in the same year, both with strategic partners. Construction is well under way in India on a number of facilities across several markets.
Similarly, in China, development of the Shanghai facility was recently announced, and additional markets are under consideration. In short, it was a very busy year for global expansion, and we don’t have plans to slow down, either. Our customers are rapidly scaling out globally, and we are right there with them, ensuring we can deliver the capacity they need, when they need it, and where they need it around the globe.
