Dutch telecom company GTS Central Europe today officially announced its acquisition of Sitel Data Center — the largest “carrier-neutral” data center in the Czech Republic.
Miloš Mastník, the head of GTS Czech, said the company presented the full range of GTS’ regional acquisitions Tuesday in order to underscore their incorporation into the newly established data center company CE Colo.
As the first CEE data center service provider, CE Colo comprises 14 data centers located in the capitals of Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania; in the the Czech Republic, there are centers in Prague, Brno and Ostrava. The total area amounts to over 13,000 sqm; the facilities serve more than 2,000 customers.
Situated in Sitel
CE Colo is headquartered in Prague and housed in the same offices as GTS, but will eventually be moved to refurbished office space in the Sitel building. According to Group CEO Adam Sawicki, GTS decided not to start a separate business unit but a “fully separate company, with separate profits and losses.” The reason was to maintain Sitel’s role as a carrier-neutral data center in the region.
“We recognize that the region is in need of a carrier-neutral player,” said CE Colo chief executive Jan Daan Luycks. For clients, the region-wide base will offer significant advantages. “We will offer a harmonized product for all our data centers; whether it’s in Romania or Warsaw the product will be the same,” he said.
Located in Prague 10, Sitel offers 2,270 sqm of customer floor space with an additional 700 sqm for possible expansion. It represents the eighth-largest peering point in Europe, with 55 percent of Czech Internet traffic passing through the center. The purchase puts newly formed CE Colo on top of the Czech data center market with a 35 percent market share.
Among the 130 companies serviced by Sitel are Tesco, DHL, Mobilkom, Vodafone and Teleplan. Expected turnover for 2010 is €6.3 million.
In 2010 GTS purchased Hungarian data center company Interware, the Romanian operator Datek and the Slovak operator Dial Telecom. Even so, company growth is not only a matter of acquisitions as technical demands on the centers’ capacities require almost continuous expansion. Last year, the company opened a new 700 sqm data center in Prague and undertook a 700 sqm expansion of its Polish data centers.
With Sitel already running near full capacity, Luycks said that further expansion is in the works.
“We launched a request last week for nearly two megawatts and identified 500 to 700 sqm of new data center space we hope to have by the end of the summer,” he said. Further plans include the expansion of the Sitel site over the next few months as well as the building of a new data center in Slovakia.