Telx CEO: Connectivity will differentiate company’s new data center

Telx announced yesterday that it plans to build a new 215,000 square foot data center in Clifton, N.J., from the ground up—a move that will enable the company to offer a high level of customization for its clients, said Telx CEO Eric Shepcaro in an interview with Connected Planet.

“It will be the most interconnected data center in the New York/ New Jersey area,” said Shepcaro, who noted that the new facility will be connected not only to an existing Telx data center in Clifton but also to the popular 60 Hudson St. location in New York City. The connection to 50 Hudson St. will be via a private fiber ring, which will minimize latency, he said.

The new data center is targeted to open by the end of 2012.

Excellent PUE rating expected
The new data center is being built to meet the requirements for a Class 3-plus data center, as specified by the Telecommunications Industry Association. But if a particular customer wanted to meet more rigorous Class 4 data center requirements, Telx would have the ability to accomplish that, Shepcaro said.

Telx made the decision to build a new data center from scratch rather than retrofit an existing building because the company believed a built-from-scratch data center would be more efficient. By building from scratch, for example, Telx was able to eliminate the need for support columns, which limit how floor space is used.

Telx is targeting a power utilization effectiveness between 1.3 and 1.5—a significantly better score than the 1.7 to 2 PUE ratings commonly found in data centers, Shepcaro said.

Some typical Telx clients include providers of mobile apps, high-frequency traders (CP: CFN Services joins Telx Financial Business Exchange) and cloud service providers, Shepcaro said.

C3 Cloud Connection Centers
The new Telx data center also will have a new name. The Clifton facility, along with all existing Telx data centers, will be known as C3 Cloud Connection Centers. The name is designed to emphasize Telx’s strong network connectivity, said Shepcaro.

“If you think about cloud computing and storage, the biggest choke point is still the network,” he said. “We think we are the best to enable cloud architectures, particularly where latency matters or closeness to eyeballs matters.”