Charles Meyers, chief operating officer of Equinix (NASDAQ: EQIX), joined REIT.com for a video interview at REITWorld 2015: NAREIT’s Annual Convention for All Things REIT at the Wynn Las Vegas.
Equinix, which owns data centers around the world, became a REIT at the start of 2015.
Meyers commented on Equinix’s recent acquisition of Japanese data center operator Bit-isle.
Japan is the third largest colocation market in the world, Meyers noted. Until the acquisition, Equinix was about the 15th largest player in the Japanese market, while Bit-isle was in seventh or eighth place. The combination of the two firms enabled Equinix to become the fourth largest player in Japan, according to Meyers.
“We feel the combination of brands, as well as their local assets, really give us the ability to serve the local Japanese market and continue to serve our multinational customers and upsize their opportunity in Japan,” Meyers said.
Equinix has also been active in Europe, Meyers noted.
“Our European business has continued to perform very, very well, and we continue to see great opportunity in the market,” he said.
Meyers noted that Equinix has recently received regulatory clearance for the acquisition of TelecityGroup plc, and it is on a path to close the transaction in first half of 2016.
“The combination of the Telecity and Equinix assets really make for a powerful pan-European platform that we can now add to the broader Equinix platform,” Meyers said.
At the same time, Equinix’s operations in the United States are also showing growth. Meyers pointed out that the big areas of demand right now tend to be in some of the highly interconnected, cloud-dense facilities and campuses. They include Silicon Valley; Ashburn, Virginia; and Secaucus, New Jersey.
In addition, demand is solid in enterprise markets such as Chicago, Dallas and Atlanta, which are starting to adopt hybrid clouds as the architecture of choice, Meyers said.
Turning to sustainability, Meyers said Equinix recently completed agreements to fund the addition of about 225 megawatts of green power onto the grid.
“That’s a really big step for us that takes us to about 82 percent of our energy coming from green and renewable sources,” he said.