Data centre colocation company Cyxtera has announced it will expand its footprint to serve enterprise and service provider customers with a new data centre in Silicon Valley and further expansions in the region and in Chicago.

Firstly, the company is building a new facility through wholesale data centre developer Prime Data Centers.

The new Valley data centre, located in Santa Clara, is a 9-MW building currently under construction and is expected to be ready for customers in late 2022.

Cyxtera is also adding capacity in existing facilities in Silicon Valley and Chicago in July and December of 2021, respectively.

The future Santa Clara facility is a four-story, 121,000-square-foot data centre that will be Cyxtera’s third building at its SFO4 data centre campus.

Additionally, Cyxtera is introducing approximately 1.6 MW of capacity at its SFO1 facility to support increasing demand from customers for retail colocation services.

In Chicago, the company is adding approximately 2 MW of capacity to its ORD2 data centre, located in Elk Grove Village, IL, 3 miles from O’Hare International Airport.

Nelson Fonseca, president and CEO of Cyxtera, said: “Our customers and partners require access to world-class colocation services and seamless interconnection solutions in top tier markets.

“By adding a new facility in Silicon Valley and bringing more capacity online in our existing facilities there and in Chicago, we’re able to continue delivering Cyxtera’s innovative solutions to even more of our existing and prospective customers.”

Jonathan Schroth, research analyst on the data centre Infrastructure & Services team for 451 Research, a part of S&P Global Market Intelligence, said: “As the world in 2020 grappled with the pandemic, enterprises shifted their processes and infrastructure toward digitalization at rates not previously seen.

“This resulted in strong demand for data centre space from cloud and IT service providers. The momentum in business strength witnessed by many data centre operators in 2020 seems to be persisting.”

Last February, Cyxtera agreed to merge with publicly listed Starboard Value Acquisition Corp. (NASDAQ: SVAC) in a US$3.4 billion transaction.

The combined company created the third-largest publicly held global provider of retail colocation and interconnection services, with 61 data centres in 29 markets around the world, serving more than 2,300 enterprises, service providers, and government agencies.