LinkedIn Vacates Lots of Space at Equinix Data Centers

LinkedIn has left a lot of vacant space in multiple Equinix data centers in the Americas.

The social network company has been revamping its data center strategy, switching to an infrastructure that is more like other hyperscale cloud platforms, such as the ones operated by Facebook, Google, or LinkedIn’s new parent company, Microsoft. A part of this shift appears to be consolidating much of its retail colocation footprint into few large wholesale facilities.

In the fourth quarter, LinkedIn moved equipment out of 1,300 cabinets in Equinix data centers in the Americas, Equinix CFO, Keith Taylor, said on the Equinix earnings call Wednesday. The social network retained its interconnection footprint in the colocation company’s facilities.

Equinix sales “team is working hard to backfill the space,” Taylor said. The “LinkedIn churn,” he said, will have a $6.8 million impact on Equinix’s first-quarter revenue. “We have some great line-of-sight into some ecosystem-enhancing opportunities.”

LinkedIn recently launched two large data centers as part of its new infrastructure strategy. One is in Hillsboro, Oregon, where the company has leased wholesale data center space from Infomart Data Centers, and the other is in Singapore, leased from Digital Realty Trust.

Read more: LinkedIn Adopting the Hyperscale Data Center Way

Equinix has been expecting the LinkedIn exodus since at least the middle of last year. Taylor mentioned the coming churn on the company’s second-quarter call, referring to “the elevated churn in Q1 2017 related to the final phase of LinkedIn's bifurcation strategy.”

Equinix announced $3.6 billion in revenue for 2016 -- a 33 percent increase year over year -- but a big chunk of the increase was due to new revenue from two big acquisitions: TelecityGroup, which closed last year, and Bit-isle, which closed at the end of 2015.

Equinix stock was 2.83 percent down in after-hours trading Wednesday following the earnings release.

See also: You Can Now Plug Directly Into Salesforce Servers at Equinix Data Centers