NTT, Macquarie Form Strategic Data Center Partnership

NTT facility in Hillsboro, Ore. Image courtesy of NTT

Macquarie Asset Management and NTT, the Japanese IT infrastructure and services company, have agreed to establish a strategic real estate partnership covering NTT’s wholesale facilities in Europe and North America.

Financials on the deal were not disclosed.

NTT is one of the world’s largest data center operators, with more than 1,300 MW of capacity today, as well as a further 25 percent of that in its development pipeline.

The partnership will give Macquarie the opportunity to invest real estate capital alongside NTT to support its expansion in Europe and North America, while giving NTT the opportunity to further accelerate its data center development.

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In a prepared statement, Brett Robson, global head of real estate for Macquarie Asset Management, said that the company sees data centers as a very attractive sector to invest in, given the exponential growth of global data and computing and the significant capital requirements for operators to keep up with user demand.

Masaaki Moribayashi, president and board director for NTT, added that the company has ambitious plans to build and operate more data centers, and its strategic partnership with Macquarie will allow NTT achieve this goal. “Macquarie’s real estate investment capabilities are highly attractive as we consider the ongoing development of our platform in Europe and North America,” Moribayashi added.

NTT’s seven data center campuses in the U.S. are in metro Sacramento, Calif. (three data centers); Silicon Valley; metro Chicago; Hillsboro, Ore.; metro Dallas; Ashburn, Va. (five data centers); and metro Phoenix.

Getting greener

NTT has committed to achieving net zero emissions across its data center operations by 2030, by which time it’s also aiming for its global data center portfolio to be 100 percent powered by renewable energy.

That connects with one of the two big current trends in data center real estate, according to a 2022 outlook from CBRE. The firm notes that as power requirements for data center occupiers continue to grow, “Power constraints will remain the biggest threat to new developments in markets like Northern Virginia and Silicon Valley.”

The other trend to watch, CBRE says, is that “Markets with limited land availability will begin to see more vertical construction of data center space.”

Speaking of Virginia, last May, Digital Fortress opened a 100-acre campus in Richmond, offering a completed, speculative 250,000-square-foot building with 4.1 MW of capacity.