Thomson Reuters Extends Savvis Contract

Managed hosting provider Savvis, Inc. (SVVS) has announced a one-year extension of its master services agreement with Thomson Reuters that includes the deployment of IT infrastructure services in Asia. Savvis also said it has opened its new Chicago data center.

Reuters, a long-time customer of Savvis, was recently purchased by Thomson. The merger created some suspense about the renewal of the contract, which was valued at approximately $50 million. Securities analysts who track Savvis had been keenly focused on the status of the Reuters deal, which represented significant revenue for the company.

Under terms of the agreement, Savvis will continue to serve as an approved vendor to provide managed hosting and managed network solutions to support the collection of exchange data for Thomson Reuters (RTRSY) market data services worldwide, as well as managed hosting services that underpin the flagship ThomsonReuters.com website. Savvis will also provide managed hosting services delivered from its Singapore data center supporting Thomson Reuters expansion activities in Asia.

"The combined Thomson Reuters organization is now able to benefit from buying both network and hosting services under a single Master Services Agreement with Savvis," said Richard Warley, International Managing Director at Savvis. "We will continue to provide both of these services in the main geographies in Europe, North America and Asia. As Thomson Reuters continues through its integration plan we anticipate being able to deliver further cost and operational benefits through use of our virtualized hosting and global VPN services."

Savvis' new Chicago data center features 20,000 square feet of raised floor space and more than 160 watts per square foot of power, and offers financial customers the ability to host their trading applications in close proximity to two major derivatives markets via Savvis Proximity Hosting. IntercontinentalExchange (ICE) is one of the two exchanges located within the data center.

"We are pleased to continue our hosting infrastructure expansion in Chicago and offer Savvis' low latency Proximity Hosting Service for the futures markets," said Varghese Thomas, Vice President and General Manager of Financial Markets for Savvis. "This further expands our global portfolio of low latency solutions for the financial markets and is another building block in our plans to offer high availability application hosting and low latency network access for the world's leading trading venues and liquidity pools across all asset classes."

In addition to the recently announced Proximity Hosting in London, Savvis also plans to expand the Proximity Hosting model to major exchanges in Tokyo and Singapore over the next 6 to 12 months.