The 11,600m sq. metre Munich datacentre, the Group’s fourth in Germany, was built in 2000 for KPNQwest at a cost in excess of £17 million (€25 million) to provide approximately 4,600m2 of net datacentre space. The datacentre asset has been acquired for a nominal amount together with a long lease for the property.
IXEurope plans to invest approximately £1 million (€1.5 million) on refurbishing and upgrading the Munich datacentre to bring the operational infrastructure in line with that of the Group’s other datacentres. The site, which will be opened in phases over the next 12 months, is expected to become EBITDA positive within a short period and to have an overall positive effect on Group 2006 EBITDA.
The customer, already hosted in two other IXDatacentre locations in Europe, will become the first major occupant of the Munich IXDatacentre.
Guy Willner, Chief Executive Officer of IXEurope said: "The purchase of this substantial enterprise quality datacentre in Munich and the signing of our first major customer for the facility demonstrate our ability to acquire datacentres at attractive prices with the support and trust of existing customers. We now have well over a quarter of a million square feet of capacity when we include both existing and planned extensions to our 11 datacentre portfolio.
“We are particularly pleased that this new customer has committed to a multi-year contract, which enables us to achieve EBITDA positive from Munich shortly after the acquisition. We continue to regard Germany as a market ripe for further datacentre growth as the economy recovers."