Equinix to Build Fifth Tokyo Data Center

Equinix is building its fifth Tokyo data center roughly a year after it built the fourth one there. The $43 million data center will be about 55,000 square feet, providing total capacity of 725 cabinets in two phases. The first phase will provide 350 cabinets and is schedule to open in the first quarter of 2016.

The data center is in response to strong demand from financial services, cloud, and content providers for interconnection services in Tokyo. TY5 is located in a single-tenant facility and is being built in close proximity to TY3, both in close proximity to Tokyo’s financial district and the major financial exchanges. TY3 is about 80,000 square feet and was reported to cost $70 million.

Financial services are attracted to the location thanks to low-latency connectivity to exchanges and an established ecosystem of financial services customers. Equinix has about 60 customers in the financial services space in Tokyo.

The appeal extends beyond financial services however. As it does elsewhere in the world, Equinix also caters to cloud and content providers in Japan because of rich connectivity options at its facilities. Equinix Tokyo has access to more than 1,000 domestic and international network providers.

“TY5 will be built in response to the various demands being driven by the digital economy across the cloud, mobile, and financial services industries,” said Kei Furuta, managing director for Equinix Japan. “As Tokyo is a major international finance center that houses some of the world’s largest investment banks, trading platforms, and insurance companies, it is important that we provide the necessary interconnection services to meet these increasing demands.”

According to research firm Forrester, the data center market in Japan is forecasted to reach US$14.2 billion by 2016.

Equinix continues to expand in Japan and across Asia Pacific in general. Shortly after announcing its fourth Tokyo data center in 2013, the company announced another one in Osaka, Japan's second-largest market. The first Osaka data center was opened in partnership with K-Opticom, a large access provider, with support from O-BIC, an Osaka government agency.

The company recently launched a service that provides private network links to Google’s cloud in 15 markets, including Tokyo.