CyrusOne Continues Expansion in Houston

High-density colocation specialist CyrusOne will build a new 94,000 square foot data center in West Houston, with an option to add a second 100,000 square foot facility on adjacent property, the company said today. The expansion will eventually give the company more than 480,000 square feet of space in seven data centers in Texas, including three facilities in Houston, three in Dallas and one in Austin.

"Our decision to build a third data center facility in Houston is based on increased local, national and international customer demand as companies are restructuring their data center strategies in an ever-changing economy," said David Ferdman, President and CEO, CyrusOne. "Since our entrance into the Houston market in 2001, we have built a strong momentum within the energy, financial services, and technology industries, as companies are realizing the benefits of data center colocation, including scalability of infrastructure, deferred capital expenditures associated with building a data center and increased availability of critical applications."

CyrusOne’s West Houston data center will be a "greenfield" project on land along the North West Beltway between I-10 and 290. The facility will offering the highest power redundancy (2N architecture) and support 250 watts per square foot across the entire data center floor. The site has access to redundant utility power feeds and is on a major fiber corridor in Houston.

The project continues an aggressive expansion by CyrusOne, which is owned by ABRY Partners, a Boston-based private equity firm that bought the company in 2007. In February the company leased an additional 81,000 square feet of space in Dallas adjacent to its existing facility in Lewisville and commissioned two new pods totaling 25,000 square feet in its existing 125,000 square foot Houston campus.

The company said its expansion is being driven by strong customer demand for high density colocation, which in turn is a function of changes in the capital markets. “In the fourth quarter of 2008, following the stock market crash in October, businesses began to change their strategy for acquiring data center space,” said Lydia Leong, Research Director Gartner Research. “As a result, demand for colocation is increasing due to capacity constraints, business uncertainty and lack of capital to support data center construction projects.”