On November 28, Equinix will open its new data center HH1, marking a new German location for Equinix in the digital city of Hamburg. Through this expansion into a fourth market in Germany, we are further expanding our global network and responding to the growing demand for private connectivity at the digital edge. Thanks to HH1, Hamburg will be the beneficiary of high-performance digital infrastructure and be better equipped to overcome the future challenges of digitization.
Digital City Hamburg
As a European trade center, Hamburg has always been a hub for intercultural exchange, networking and innovation. Hamburg’s active contact with other cities and many companies has led to a steady stream of investment from the Hanseatic City in new ideas and technologies. Today, Hamburg is not only a leading European hub for trade and industry, but also occupies a leading position in digitization: According to the Smart City Index published by the German association Bitkom, Hamburg is Germany’s most digitized city.[1] In 2015, the Hamburg Senate adopted the “Digital City” strategy, which aims to establish Hamburg as a leading digital hub in Germany and Europe. Within this framework, the city supports numerous Smart City initiatives such as the digitization of its administration, urban mobility and the smartPORT project, which uses modern sensor technology and artificial intelligence to create a fully connected and integrated port infrastructure.
Rapid digital transformation is also noticeable in the area of trade, manufacturing and logistics. Companies based in Hamburg are increasingly relying on digital solutions to make existing processes more efficient and to implement new and innovative applications. Furthermore, the city is a leading center for e-commerce in Germany and is home to a lively start-up scene as well as innovative manufacturers and logistics companies. Initiatives such as Hamburg@Work further aim to promote exchange between companies and thus to further advance digitization.
HH1: A new Equinix location
To continue this success story in the future, the city must continuously invest in building effective digital infrastructure capable of processing immense amounts of data.
As the world’s leading data center operator, Equinix aims to support Hamburg’s rapid digital transformation and enable the further development of sustainable digital infrastructure. We are delighted to be opening a new and, overall fourth, German location on November 28 with the HH1 data center. With this expansion, we are acknowledging Hamburg’s central role as a German digital hub. HH1 will further expand our European and global network and enable us to meet the growing demand for private connectivity in the future. In addition to the data centers in Frankfurt, Düsseldorf and Munich, HH1 will be Equinix tenth IBX data center in Germany.
HH1 will open a new, digital gateway to the world for companies located in the metropolitan region and help them expand to new markets. The added value of Equinix’s data centers lies primarily in their versatile, global connections to partners, customers, leading cloud providers and network providers. In Hamburg, the retail sector, which has become increasingly digitized in recent years, stands to gain significant advantages from Equinix’s digital infrastructure. Today, more than 3,000 e-Commerce companies are active in the region who rely on fast and secure digital connections to payment service providers and logistics companies in order to process transactions and orders smoothly.[2] Hamburg’s manufacturing sector, including shipbuilding companies and aircraft manufacturers, will also benefit directly from these connections, for instance when implementing IoT-based applications such as predictive maintenance. Within a data center, manufacturers can share critical machine data with IoT specialists, cloud and data analytics providers in real time. Predictive maintenance thus allows companies to anticipate possible defects and to significantly increase the efficiency of production processes.
Through HH1, Equinix provides a neutral, digital platform in Hamburg which enables global interconnections between various enterprises. Customers benefit not only from low latency data transmission, but also from a high level of security preventing down-time and unauthorized access. Interconnection further enables companies to share data through access to industry-specific, digital ecosystems. These facilitate the implementation of complex digital projects by connecting partners and accelerating the exchange of expertise and information.
Hamburg’s Smart City initiatives will equally benefit from the development of an integrated and digital ecosystem that brings together the city’s infrastructure such as emergency call centers, public utilities or transport companies with external companies such as automotive manufacturers, mobility service providers or IoT specialists in a virtual location, linking them to clouds and networks. The smartPORT is another excellent example of such a digital ecosystem. The efficient management of the flow of goods and port logistics requires the constant exchange of data between ships, trucks, rail networks and waterways. This is only possible via a common, integrated platform on which the data of all participants can be shared for analysis. Data centers form the foundation of such a successful digital ecosystem.
The future of digitization
The developments in Hamburg demonstrate the growing demand of German companies for digital solutions and networking with relevant partners. Key to meeting this demand is the need to provide private connections directly at the edge of the digital network, where data is created, and the physical and virtual worlds meet.
A recent market study conducted by Equinix, the Global Interconnection Index Volume 3, predicts that private connectivity will increase by an average of 51% annually until 2022. By then, it’s estimated that total worldwide bandwidth capacity will surpass 13,300 Tbit/s. Germany is no exception: Survey results among German IT decision-makers show that interconnection will become increasingly important as a reliable and fast alternative to the public Internet. More than four out of ten respondents believe that private data exchange between companies will make a decisive contribution to counteracting the slowdown of the public Internet (41%), while another 35% claim that bypassing the public Internet is crucial for successful business operations.[3]
This need for interconnection at the digital edge will require the further expansion of high-performance digital infrastructure in the near future. As a leading global data center operator, we are making a decisive contribution to ensuring that companies and cities in Germany can cope with the growing volume of data and that they find the right partners to implement even the most complex projects. By the end of this year, we will be – from a geographical point of view – located along Germany’s north-south axis, as well as in the center and the west of the country. By extending our presence and expanding into the Hamburg market, we offer companies and industries located in the metropolitan region access to one of the world’s largest digital platforms. We are thus ready to accompany Hamburg on its way into the digital future.
Learn more about Equinix’s new HH1 data center in Hamburg.
[1] https://www.bitkom.org/Presse/Presseinformation/Deutschlands-smarteste-Staedte-Hamburg-Karlsruhe-Stuttgart
[2]https://www.hk24.de/produktmarken/branchen-cluster-netzwerke/branchen/handel/branchenueberblick/3162426
[3]https://www.equinix.de/newsroom/press-releases/pr/123818/Frankfurt-entwickelt-sich-zu-Europas-grtem-Wachstumsmarkt-fr-private-Konnektivitt-an-der-Digital-Edge/
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