Digital Realty takes over Pacific Northwest interconnection hub

Digital Realty, a leading global provider of data centre, colocation and interconnection solutions, is set to acquire a further 49% stake in the Westin Building Exchange in Seattle, Washington.

The acquisition will make Digital Realty the majority owner of the facility with leaving previous owner Clise Properties with a 2% stake.

The Westin Building Exchange serves as the primary interconnection hub for the Pacific Northwest, linking Canada, Alaska and Asia along the Pacific Rim. The building is the sixth most densely interconnected facility in North America, and is home to leading global cloud, content and interconnection providers, housing over 150 carriers and more than 10,000 cross-connects. The 34-story tower is adjacent to Amazon's 4.1 million square foot urban campus and overlooks Elliott Bay as well as the downtown Seattle skyline.  

"This investment represents a significant step towards executing on the PlatformDIGITAL roadmap we introduced last November, adding coverage, capacity and connectivity capabilities to enable our customers' digital transformation strategies," said Digital Realty Chief Executive Officer A. William Stein. "This linchpin asset gives us the opportunity to fully leverage our robust business infrastructure and open up a full suite of enterprise IT solutions to our global customer base. This transaction further strengthens our interconnection platform and demonstrates our commitment to accelerating digital business on PlatformDIGITAL."

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The Westin Building Exchange occupies a unique position in the communications infrastructure landscape, given customers' growing propensity to deploy IT infrastructure at centers of data exchange around the world, bringing users, things, applications, clouds and networks to the data. Digital Realty's investment in the Westin Building will unlock new possibilities for customers to scale digital transformation by removing data gravity barriers.  

The Westin Building Exchange sits at the digital crossroads of the Pacific Northwest and provides direct and virtual access to one of the richest communities of cloud and network providers, powered by Digital Realty's Service Exchange. When fully integrated into PlatformDIGITAL, the Westin Building Exchange will play a strategic role in addressing customers' coverage, capacity and ecosystem connectivity needs with a single data centre provider.  

The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions and is expected to close in the first half of 2020. Upon closing, Digital Realty will assume management and operational oversight for the facility.