Michael Dell ‘Looking Forward’ To New Switch Data Center
‘With this agreement, we welcome Switch to a wonderful neighborhood, and at the same time continue to expand our relationships with leading data center service providers,’ says Dell Technologies CEO Michael Dell.
Data center provider Switch is building a new data center next door to Dell Technologies’ global headquarters in Round Rock, Texas, with Dell selling the land to Switch, which will construct a massive 1.5-million-square-foot campus likely to be equipped with many Dell products.
Dell and Las Vegas-based Switch initially formed a partnership, along with FedEx, in November to develop multi-cloud edge infrastructure services to bring compute, storage and connectivity to the edge with Dell providing hardware and managed services. Then in May, Switch unveiled plans to enter the Texas market via its $420 million acquisition of Data Foundry that included data centers in Austin and Houston.
Dell Technologies founder, Chairman and CEO Michael Dell said he’s “looking forward” to building new offerings with Switch for customers.
“With this agreement, we welcome Switch to a wonderful neighborhood, and at the same time continue to expand our relationships with leading data center service providers,” said Michael Dell in a statement.
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Congratulations @Switch on your Texas expansion! 🤠
Looking forward to what we can build together for customers 🤝 @DellTech https://t.co/OyvLxEGh7R
— Michael Dell (@MichaelDell) June 3, 2021
Dell is striving to expand its partnerships with colocation and data center service providers in a move to help accelerate the reach of Apex, its new as-a-service portfolio of infrastructure offerings for the hybrid and multi-cloud world. Apex is Dell’s answer to customers seeking more public cloud-like IT solutions that are pay-per-use and consumption-based in terms of costs.
At Dell Technologies World 2021 last month, the company unveiled a strategic partnership with data center colocation giant Equinix to deliver Apex via Equinix’s massive data center footprint of more than 220 centers worldwide.
In terms of its new data center partnership and land sale to Switch, plans call for Switch to build up to 125 MW of data centers on land bordering Dell’s headquarters in Round Rock. Construction is expected to begin this summer with the goal of powering the facilities with 100 percent renewable energy.
Switch CEO Rob Roy, who founded the company in 2000, said the Dell partnership is another milestone in his company’s efforts to expand its data center footprint in the central U.S. region. “To be strategically located alongside the Dell Technologies global headquarters is an opportunity to continue broadening our offerings of the world’s most advanced data center infrastructure to current and future Switch clients,” said Roy.
Switch has data center campuses in Las Vegas and Reno, Nev.; Grand Rapids, Mich.; and Atlanta as well as plans to open a campus in Bangkok, Thailand, according to the company’s website.
Data center providers and hyperscale public cloud titans such as Amazon Web Services, Google and Microsoft are pouring billions into expanding their data center footprints as demand for cloud services and innovative software-defined data center infrastructure increases.
Worldwide data center infrastructure sales of hardware and software reached $165 billion in 2020, up 4 percent year over year, according to data from market research firm Synergy Research Group. Public cloud infrastructure spending accounted for 43 percent of the total market, while enterprise spending accounted for 57 percent.
Dell was the world leader in terms of server and storage data center revenue for the enterprise in 2020, while also a leader in public cloud infrastructure sales.
Last week, Dell reported a record-breaking first fiscal quarter 2021 thanks to a surge in remote work and education across the globe. Dell generated $24.5 billion in total revenue in its first quarter, up 12 percent year over year.