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.
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 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]
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 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]
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 degradations which may have been a result of the fire included DigitalOcean, Coolify, and Cloudflare.[36]
