TelecityGroup

Telecity Group plc

Type	Private
Industry	Internet, Data Center, Colocation
Founded	1998
Headquarters	London, United Kingdom
Key people	John Hughes (Chairman of the board), Michael Tobin (former CEO)
Services	Data centres
Revenue	£348.7 million (2014)[1]
Operating income	£90.0 million (2014)[1]
Profit	£59.7 million (2014)[1]
Website	www.telecitygroup.com

Telecity Group plc (formerly TelecityRedbus and before that Telecity), is a European carrier-neutral datacentre and colocation centre provider. It specialises in the design, build and management of highly connected, resilient and secure environments in which customers can house their telecoms, internet and IT infrastructure. It was listed on the London Stock Exchange until it was acquired by Equinix in January 2016.

History

TelecityGroup plc is the result of the uniting of three separate companies – TeleCity Limited, Redbus Interhouse Limited and Globix Holdings (UK) Limited. TeleCity Limited was founded by Mike Kelly and Anish Kapoor from Manchester University in April 1998 and opened its first data centre in Manchester. At that time 3i Group made an investment of £24m in the Company.^[2]

In July 1998 Redbus Interhouse Limited was incorporated, and commenced operations in its first data centre in London Docklands in July 1999. By March 2000, Redbus Interhouse Limited floated on the main market of the London Stock Exchange and in June 2000, TeleCity Limited’s parent company, TeleCity plc floated on the London Stock Exchange.^[3]

In September 2005 TeleCity plc was taken private by 3i and Oak Hill and by October of that year Telecity Group plc was incorporated and became the holding company of Telecity plc and its group companies in November 2005. In January 2006 Telecity Group acquired Redbus Interhouse plc, a rival business,^[4] resulting in the two business, TeleCity and Redbus, trading under the name of TelecityRedbus. Later in 2006 Telecity Group plc bought the European assets of the US-based Globix Corporation.^[5]

Following a rebranding exercise implemented in August 2007, TeleCity, Redbus and Globix (UK) began to trade under the name TelecityGroup. In October Telecity Group plc listed on the main market of the London Stock Exchange.^[6]

In August 2010 TelecityGroup acquired Internet Facilitators Limited (IFL), a provider of-carrier neutral data centres in Manchester.^[7] In August 2011 TelecityGroup acquired Data Electronics, which operates two carrier-neutral data centres in Dublin,^[8] and in September 2011 UK Grid, a carrier-neutral data centre operator in Manchester was acquired.^[9]

TelecityGroup has announced it is expanding its data centre capacity across Europe. At the end of 2011 the company had 68 MW of available customer power and this will be increased to 124 MW by 2016. As part of this expansion the first phase of a new 9 MW data centre was opened in Amsterdam (Southeast AMS 5) in early 2012, and on 2 July 2012 Ed Vaizey, UK Minister for Communications, officially opened the first phase of a 21 MW expansion at the company's London Powergate facility.^[10]

In August 2012, TelecityGroup acquired Tenue Oy, a provider of carrier-neutral data centres in Helsinki, Finland.^[11] In November 2012 TelecityGroup acquired Academica, a data centre and IT services operator, also in Finland, giving the enlarged TelecityGroup Finland a total of three data centres and 2MW of operational capacity; 7MW of additional capacity will be opened in two new facilities in due course.^[11]

In May 2013 TelecityGroup acquired SadeceHosting, a provider of data centre and hosted services in Istanbul, Turkey^[12] and in November 2013, TelecityGroup acquired 3DC, an independent data centre provider in Sofia, Bulgaria.^[13]

In May 2015, US data company Equinix announced it would be acquiring TelecityGroup for £2.35 billion.^[14] On 13 November 2015, the European Commission granted clearance for the Equinix offer to acquire Telecity.^[15] On 15 January 2016 Equinix announced that it has completed the acquisition of Telecity.^[16]

Operations

The company operates 37 data centres, centrally located in the key European cities:^[17]

• Amsterdam – 5 (Gyroscoopweg, Science Park, Southeast Amsterdam 2 (Zuidoost), Amstel Business Park, Southeast Amsterdam 5 - (Zuidoost))
• Dublin – 4 (City West Business Campus, Kilcarbery Park, Northwest Business Park Unit 2, Northwest Business Park Unit 14 )
• Frankfurt – 2 (Lyoner Strasse, Gutleutstrasse)
• Helsinki – 5 (Hiomo, Suvilahti, Uspenski, Viikinmäki, Hansa)
• Istanbul - 1 (SadeceHosting)
• London – 8 (Prospect House - Tottenham Court Road, Oliver’s Yard - Old Street, Powergate - Acton and in Docklands, Sovereign House, Meridian Gate -, Bonnington House, 8&9 Harbour Exchange and 6&7 Harbour Exchange.
• Manchester – 4 (Willams & Kilburn House, Reynolds House, Synergy House, Joule House)
• Milan – 3 (Via Savona, Basiglio, Via Cascia)
• Paris - 3 (Energy Park, Victor Hugo, Condorcet)
• Sofia - 1 (Sofia-1)
• Stockholm - 2 (Stockholm 1- Bromma, Stockholm 2 - Skondal)
• Warsaw - 2 (Warsaw 1(LIM), Warsaw 2)

TelecityGroup's competition for European Data Centre services includes Interxion and Equinix (who acquired Telecity Group in 2016) (and formerly, before they merged, Redbus).

Colocation services

TelecityGroup provides data centre and colocation services to financial services companies, cloud service operators and content companies. TelecityGroup data centres provide their customers with an environment in which they can outsource their technical, web and IT infrastructure, leaving them free to concentrate on their core business.^[18]

Connectivity services

TelecityGroup data centres host telecoms networks, including fixed line networks, mobile operators, Internet service providers and content distribution networks. These companies use TelecityGroup data centres to connect to Internet exchange points, each other and their end customers, such as Internet content companies.^[19]

The company hosts the following major Internet exchange points:

• Amsterdam: AMS-IX and NL-IX;
• Dublin: INEX;
• Frankfurt: DE-CIX;
• London: LINX and LoNAP;
• Paris: France-IX and SFINX;
• Manchester: ManchesterIX;
• Milan: MIX.
• Sofia: BIX.BG, BalkanIX
• Stockholm: Netnod and Stockholm Internet eXchange;
• Warsaw PLIX;

TelecityGroup is a Patron of Euro-IX, the association of European Internet Exchanges and an associate member of the Internet Watch Foundation.

Industry standards and accreditations

In April 2010 all of TelecityGroup's European data centres were certified compliant with the international security management standard ISO/IEC 27001:2005 and the business quality management standard ISO 9001:2008. In June 2010 TelecityGroup achieved company-wide OHSAS 18001 certification for Occupational Health and Safety management systems.

Environment

As datacentres consume significant amounts of power, operators are under increasing pressure to demonstrate environmental responsibility. To this end TelecityGroup was an early adopter of the EU's Code of Conduct for datacentres,^[20] a voluntary code launched in December 2008 which promotes the adoption of energy efficient best practices amongst data centres owners and operators. TelecityGroup is also a member of The Green Grid. TelecityGroup is also the first specialist data centre services provider to achieve the Carbon Trust Standard in the UK.^[21] The Carbon Trust Standard was developed by The Carbon Trust in 2007/08 to encourage good practice in carbon measurement, management and reduction by businesses and public sector organisations. In June 2010 TelecityGroup achieved company-wide ISO 14001 certification for Environmental Management.

References