Savvis Expanding to Global Financial Hubs

Savvis is looking to expand its data center network to emerging global financial centers, including locations in Brazil, Mumbai and Sydney, Australia, the managed hosting and cloud computing specialist said Monday. The strategy is being driven by interest from Savvis' base of financial services customers, especially Thomson Reuters, which hosts a global low-latency trading network with Savvis. As electronic trading becomes more ubiquitous, Thomson Reuters is interested in offering services in growing financial business hubs across the globe.

"Globally, we continue to explore expansions with Thomson Reuters," said Savvis CEO Jim Ousley. "Today, we’re looking at Brazil, Sydney, and Mumbai. In these instances, Thomson Reuters serves as an anchor tenant and helps fund the initial capital requirements. We lease the data center space from a local provider and handle all of the infrastructure services.

"From there, we have the potential to expand our use beyond our relationship with Thomson Reuters as we see new business opportunities develop," Ousley added. "his relationship clearly helps Thomson Reuters, but also helps SAVVIS accelerate its international expansion."

Expansion is "Cloud-Driven"
Bill Fathers, Savvis Senior Vice President, and Managing Director U.S., said the international expansion is "very much cloud driven." The company's large financial services customers "are interested in going into these markets to get access to these new trading environments. The markets of a lot of these countries are opening up very, very quickly and automating quickly."

"This is not a speculative 'build it and they will come,' " Said Fathers. "When we look at entering into these markets, it’s typically off the back of having secured commitments from several customers going into each market. It's very much a market trend, and it's a happening quickly."

Reuters operates a global trading network from Savvis data centers in New York, Chicago, London, Frankfurt, Tokyo, and Singapore, from which it offers customers access to low latency market data, analytics and data management platform

Financial Sector's "Return to Strength"
Savvis executives said the level of demand from the financial services sector has been strong, boosted by interest in new approaches to infrastructure spending, including cloud computing.

"The financial vertical has returned to strength," said Ousley. "The challenges from 2008 and 2009 are behind the financial companies and there’s been an important change in how many of these companies are thinking about their IT requirements. We’re seeing a significant shift way from a legacy mindset, where financial institutions felt compelled to own and manage their own solutions. Today, financial firms are looking for someone to deliver comprehensive solution in a short amount of time, and this includes a converged cloud."