Large Paris Lease for Digital Realty

Digital Realty Trust (DLR) said Monday that IXEurope Plc has signed a new lease for 26,000 square feet of space in Digital Realty's facility in Paris, France. IXEurope will use the space for an advanced data center facility, and begin installing customers in the fourth quarter of 2007. The lease will not be affected by Equinix' acquisition of IXEurope, which was announced Friday, as the expansion space provides additional capacity in a key business market.

The lease fills up the available customer space at Digital's Paris building. The company is building out 200,000 square feet of space in the facility to lease as build-to-suit and turnkey data center space, which returns a much higher leasing rate than undeveloped shell space.

Digital Realty Trust plans to deliver the first phase of the redevelopment, consisting of 107,000 square feet of raised floor, to the market by the end of the first quarter of 2008. The Paris site benefits from a total of 36MVA of fully redundant power from three separate sub-stations.

"Truly high-quality datacentre space with this level of power is difficult to find in Paris, which makes our facility unique in the French market," said Adam Levine, European Sales Director for Digital Realty Trust. "With our redevelopment plans, Digital Realty Trust will offer customers a significant amount of Turn-Key Datacentre as well as Powered Base Building space that can accommodate build-to-suit projects - giving us the flexibility to meet customers' immediate and future datacentre requirements."

Levine, who is Digital Realty Trust's European Sales Director, will oversee the company's new Paris sales office at 19 Boulevard Malesherbes in Paris. Levine comes to Digital Realty Trust from CBRE where he was an associate director responsible for its Technology Practice Group department in France.

Digital's Paris facility was acquired in 2006 and consists of a 151,000 square foot datacentre facility, which includes more than 76,000 square feet of raised floor.

"Extending our presence in this prime location in Paris is in direct response to demand for highly specified datacentre capacity and reflects our expectations on the forward growth and momentum of the business," said Michel Brignano, General Manager, IXEurope France.