The new facility based in Sofia – called SO2 – will support Bulgarian companies as they transform their businesses through interconnection with digital supply chain partners, cloud adoption and access to new markets around the world.
“Data centre colocation provides a powerful level of direct interconnection and empowers enterprises to react in real time, adapt quickly to change and leverage digital ecosystems to create new value and growth,” said Eric Schwartz (pictured), president, Equinix EMEA. The new SO2 data centre in Sofia will provide local businesses and multinationals with the latest interconnection options to accelerate business performance and support their IT transformation initiatives.”
Equinix says that Bulgaria is a strategic location within the Balkans because of its access to the EU, Turkey and the Caucasus. The SO2 IBX will meet customer demand by providing roughly 350 cabinets in the first phase build out with the potential to add 1,100 cabinets in subsequent phases.
“SuperHosting.BG offers hosting services to more than 200,000 websites,” said Lyubomir Rusanov, CEO, SuperHosting.BG. “The quality and continuity of services are of great importance to us. In order to guarantee them, we have been trusting Equinix Bulgaria and using their reliable colocation services for over seven years now. The opening of their second data centre will help us meet the growing demands of our clients in Bulgaria, as well as abroad.”
In addition, SO2 will also provide a secure environment for local businesses and multinationals that are looking to expand into Eastern Europe and the Middle East. The facility will also have direct connectivity to the Bulgarian Internet Exchange (BIX).
“The VMWare office in Sofia is the main R&D and innovation hub of the company in the EMEA region and is among the top three key strategic development centres for VMware worldwide. Therefore, the reliability of services in Sofia is critical for the VMWare Bulgaria R&D business operations. At the same time, the VMWare Bulgaria R&D business operations needed to scale the business and find a prominent partner in Eastern Europe that could meet these needs. By leveraging Equinix’s global interconnection platform with 99.9999% uptime, we’ve been able to not only reach new markets, but also accelerate our business performanc,” added Diana Stefanova, managing director EMEA R&D site and strategic business development integrated solutions, VMware.
In keeping with the original facility - SO1 – SO2 will use 100% green energy, something the SO1 has been doing since 2016. This is in keeping with Equinix’s overall plan that it announced in 2015 to commit to 100% clean and renewable for its entire global footprint. Through a number of partnerships Equinix continues to leverage various sustainable technologies including solar, wind and fuel cells.
“Equinix’s presence in Bulgaria has been met with strong customer demand, as businesses increase their IT consumption to keep pace with the growing digital economy,” said Zdravko Nikolov, managing director, Bulgaria. “We are excited to now offer state-of-the-art data centre space locally with global capabilities and reach into 52 markets on Platform Equinix.”
Earlier this month, the company confirmed plans to build a $73 million data centre in Paris Q1 2019.
