Digital Realty

Last updated
Digital Realty Trust, Inc.
Company type Public company
Industry Real estate investment trust
Founded2004;20 years ago (2004)
Headquarters Austin, Texas, U.S.
Key people
 Mary Hogan Preusse (Chairman)
Andrew P. Power (CEO & President)
Products Data centers
RevenueIncrease2.svg US$4.69 billion (2022)
Increase2.svg US$2.47 billion (2022)
Total assets Increase2.svg US$153.32 billion (2022)
Total equity Increase2.svg US$9.879 billion (2019)
Number of employees
3,450 (2023)
Website digitalrealty.com
Footnotes /references
[1]
Digital Realty data center in Markham, Ontario DigitalRealtyDatacenterMarkham2.jpg
Digital Realty data center in Markham, Ontario

Digital Realty is a real estate investment trust that owns, operates and invests in carrier-neutral data centers across the world. The company offers data center, colocation and interconnection services.

Contents

As of June 2023, Digital Realty has 300+ facilities in 50+ metro areas across 25+ countries on six continents. The company operates in the following regions: the Americas, EMEA, and Asia Pacific. [2]


In 2020, Digital Realty joined the Science-Based Target Initiative, committing to reducing its Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 68% and Scope 3 emissions by 24% by 2030 against a 2018 baseline. [3] [4] The company is also a signatory of the Climate Neutral Data Center Pact, a self-regulatory initiative – drawn up in collaboration with the European Data Center Association (EUDCA) and Cloud Infrastructure Services Provider in Europe (CISPE) – designed to make the industry climate neutral by 2030. [5]

In July 2023, Digital Realty received a Certificate of Conformity, certifying its adherence to the Self-Regulatory Initiatives (‘SRIs’) set out by the Pact in Europe. [6]

Digital Realty is a leading purchaser of renewable energy in the industry and is making considerable efforts to make the switch to renewable power across its entire portfolio. [7] [8] 126 data centers globally are matched with renewable energy, with 100% renewable energy powering its European portfolio and U.S. colocation data centers. [9] [10] Digital Realty has 1 GW of wind and solar projects under contract in U.S. states including Texas, Illinois, North Carolina, Oregon, Arizona and Virginia. [10] [11] Its renewable portfolio resulted in 1.8 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent emissions (MtCO2e) avoided in 2022, which is comparable to the annual electricity needs of 361,800 U.S. homes. [10] The company has also installed 1.8 MW of solar panels at properties in Kenya, Greece, Switzerland, and South Korea. [10] [12]

History

The company was formed in 2004 by GI Partners, which contributed 21 data centers that it acquired through bankruptcy auctions and from distressed companies at a 20–40% discount to replacement cost. [13]

On November 4, 2004, the company became a public company via an initial public offering. [14] At that time, the company owned 23 properties comprising 5.6 million square feet. [14]

In August 2006, the company acquired a property in Phoenix, Arizona for $175 million. [15]

By March 2007, GI Partners had sold all of its shares in the company. [13]

In January 2010, the company acquired three data centers in Massachusetts and Connecticut for $375 million. [16]

In January 2012, the company acquired a 334,000 square foot data center near Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport for $63 million in a leaseback transaction. [17] The company also acquired a data center in San Francisco for $85 million. [18]

In April 2013, the company acquired the data center of Delta Air Lines in Eagan, Minnesota for $37 million in a leaseback transaction. [19]

In July 2013, the company doubled capacity at its data center in Chandler, Arizona. [20]

In May 2015, the company sold a building in Philadelphia for $161 million that it acquired in 2005 for $59 million. [21]

In October 2015, the company acquired Telx for $1.886 billion. [22]

In November 2015, the company acquired 125.9 acres of undeveloped land in Loudoun County, Virginia for $43 million and announced plans to build a 2 million square foot data center on the property. [23]

In July 2016, the company acquired 8 data centers in Europe from Equinix for $874 million. [24]

In March 2017, the company announced a $22 million expansion of its data center in Atlanta. [25]

In September 2017, the company completed the acquisition of DuPont Fabros Technology. [26] [27]

In 2018, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the company in Digital Realty Trust, Inc. v. Somers , a case in which Digital Realty fired an employee who had complained internally about the elimination of supervisory controls and the hiding of cost overruns. After he was fired, the employee sued the company, saying he was protected by whistleblower provisions in Dodd-Frank. [28] However the Supreme Court, citing specific language in Dodd-Frank, ruled that these protections only applied to whistleblowers who had first notified the SEC.

In December 2018, the company acquired Ascenty for $1.8 billion. At the time, Ascenty operated eight data centers in Brazil. [29]

In October 2019, Digital Realty announced the acquisition of European data center provider Interxion for $8.4 billion to “create a leading global provider of data centre, colocation and interconnection solutions”. [30] [31]

In January 2021, Digital Realty announced that the company's headquarters relocation to Austin, Texas. [32]

In January 2022, the company announced a 55% stake acquisition in Teraco Data Centres [33]

On 10 September 2024, at about 7.45am, a Digital Realty data centre in Loyang, Singapore caught fire. According to the Singapore Civil Defence Force, the fire "involved lithium-ion batteries housed in battery rooms on the third floor of a four-storey building". When responding to questions from the media, Digital Realty stated that all on-site personnel were evacuated from the data centre by 8.15am and no injuries were reported. The fire affected Lazada and Bytedance's systems, as well as Alibaba Cloud's Availability zone C in Singapore. [34] [35] Other companies and platforms that experienced outages or service degredations which may have been a result of the fire included DigitalOcean, Coolify, and Cloudflare. [36]

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References

  1. ↑ "UNITED STATES SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION WASHINGTON, D.C. 20549". sec.gov. Retrieved 2023-08-10.
  2. ↑ "Digital Reality Trust" . Retrieved 26 June 2023.
  3. ↑ "Digital Realty makes gains on data centre sustainability in Singapore with new cooling tower initiative". Intelligent Data Centres. Retrieved 2023-08-10.
  4. ↑ Panettieri, Joe (2023-07-19). "Digital Realty Data Centers Leverage IBM ESG Software for Carbon Monitoring, Reduction Strategy". Sustainable Tech Partner. Retrieved 2023-08-10.
  5. ↑ "Signatories – Climate Neutral Data Centre Pact" . Retrieved 2023-08-10.
  6. ↑ "Digital Realty attains climate-neutral conformity certificate". DataCentreNews UK. Retrieved 2023-08-10.
  7. ↑ "How Digital Realty is Leveraging PPAs to Lead on Renewables" . Retrieved 2023-08-10.
  8. ↑ "Digital Realty invests in photovoltaics through power purchase agreement with ENGIE". Intelligent Data Centres. Retrieved 2023-08-10.
  9. ↑ "Digital Realty reaches 1GW of certified sustainable capacity". datacentremagazine.com. 2022-07-04. Retrieved 2023-08-10.
  10. 1 2 3 4 "Environmental, Social and Governance Report 2022" (PDF). Retrieved 2023-08-10.
  11. ↑ "Digital Realty wins U.S. efficiency rating and commits to solar". DataCenterNews Asia Pacific. Retrieved 2023-08-10.
  12. ↑ Swinhoe, Dan (2023-05-26). "Everything data center operators need to know about Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs)" . Retrieved 2023-08-10.
  13. 1 2 "Digital Realty". GI Partners.
  14. 1 2 "Digital Realty Trust, Inc. Completes Initial Public Offering" (Press release). GI Partners. November 4, 2004.
  15. ↑ Miller, Rich (July 27, 2006). "Digital Realty Buys Phoenix Internet Gateway". Data Center Knowledge.
  16. ↑ Clark, Ryan (January 5, 2010). "$375M Nets Data Center Portfolio". ALM .
  17. ↑ "Digital Realty buys data center near Hartsfield-Jackson". American City Business Journals . January 4, 2012.
  18. ↑ Sailors, John (January 4, 2012). "Digital Realty Trust buys S.F. data center for $85M". American City Business Journals .
  19. ↑ "Digital Realty Completes Second Sale/Leaseback Transaction With Delta Air Lines For Its Minneapolis Data Center" (Press release). PR Newswire. April 1, 2013.
  20. ↑ Ringle, Hayley (July 29, 2013). "Digital Realty Trust doubles capacity at Chandler data center". American City Business Journals .
  21. ↑ Kostelni, Natalie (May 6, 2015). "Center City building sells for $161M". American City Business Journals .
  22. ↑ "Digital Realty Completes the Acquisition of Telx" (Press release). PR Newswire. October 12, 2015.
  23. ↑ Clabaugh, Jeff (November 16, 2015). "Digital Realty plans second massive Loudoun data center". American City Business Journals .
  24. ↑ "Digital Realty Completes Acquisition of Eight Premium European Data centers" (Press release). PR Newswire. July 5, 2016.
  25. ↑ Karkaria, Urvaksh (March 15, 2017). "Data center operator Digital Realty plans $22 million Atlanta expansion". American City Business Journals .
  26. ↑ "Digital Realty Completes Merger With DuPont Fabros" (Press release). PR Newswire. September 14, 2017.
  27. ↑ "Digital Realty acquires DuPont Fabros in $7.8B deal". American City Business Journals . September 15, 2017.
  28. ↑ Lynch, Sarah N. (June 26, 2017). "U.S. high court to review scope of Dodd-Frank whistleblower protections". Reuters .
  29. ↑ "Digital Realty Completes Acquisition Of Ascenty". December 20, 2018.
  30. ↑ Patrizio, Andy (2019-11-05). "Digital Realty acquisition of Interxion to reshape data-center landscape". Network World. Retrieved 2019-11-16.
  31. ↑ "Digital Realty, Interxion to combine in BIGGEST data centre transaction EVER at $8.4bn". Data Economy. 2019-10-29. Retrieved 2019-11-16.
  32. ↑ Joshua Bote (January 20, 2021). "In mass tech exodus, yet another firm is leaving the Bay Area for Texas". Hearst Communications . Retrieved January 21, 2021.
  33. ↑ "Digital Realty acquires 55% stake in Teraco Data Centres". TECH dot AFRICA. 2022-01-04. Retrieved 2022-01-04.
  34. ↑ "Fire at Loyang data centre, SCDF operations still ongoing after a day". Channel News Asia . 10 September 2024. Retrieved 2024-09-28.
  35. ↑ Moises, Hazel (2024-09-10). "Data Center Fire Strikes Alibaba Cloud in Singapore". W.Media. Retrieved 2024-09-28.
  36. ↑ Sharwood, Simon (10 September 2024). "Alibaba Cloud struggles after blaze at Digital Realty Singapore datacenter". The Register. Retrieved 5 October 2024.
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