The Planet Expands with London Data Center

theplanet-hq

The Planet, which is based in this Houston HQ site, is expanding to London.

When you name your company "The Planet," people shouldn't be surprised that your ambitions extend beyond the neighborhood. After years of building a huge hosting operation in Texas, The Planet is expanding with its first international facility, leasing colocation space in a Telecity data center in London. The Houston-based provider cited "significant customer demand for both international and globally redundant hosted infrastructure."

The London site will open in April, and will support up to 20 kilowatts of power per rack, the company said. The Planet is focusing its London offering on virtual racks, a solution for companies requiring multiple servers and bandwidth-intensive applications.

"For the past 18 months, we've evaluated international markets that are of strategic importance to our planned global expansion, and Europe has been at the forefront of those discussions," said Doug Erwin, The Planet's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. "We've had serious customer interest, which underscored that the time was right to move forward. With 42 percent of our customers located in international markets, we expect considerable interest in this new operation."

The Planet is among the U.S. hosting providers who have built a large base of international customers seeking improved network connectivity to host their web sites. The company has been gradually extending its infrastructure to support customers with national and international footprints, adding new nodes in Equinix (EQIX) colocation facilities in San Jose, Calif., and Ashburn, Va. to imrpove network performance and latency for customers. It also has teamed with EdgeCast to deliver content delivery network (CDN) services.

The Planet recently announced plans for a new 86,000 square foot data center in Plano, Texas, bringing its raised floor footprint to 216,000 square feet. The new facility will support The Planet’s expanding colocation business and be operational in May 2009.The Planet began as a specialist in dedicated hosting but has recently expanded into managed hosting and colocation.

The TelecityGroup operates 20 network-independent data centers across seven European countries. "I'm delighted that TelecityGroup will play a crucial role in supporting The Planet's roll out into Europe, by hosting and maintaining their infrastructure in our new highly resilient and secure Powergate data centre," said Adriaan Oosthoek, Managing Director for TelecityGroup UK and Ireland. The Powergate facility is Telecity's newest facility in London.