BATS Global Markets is going to move primary infrastructure that supports all of its exchange platforms into Equinix's NY5 data center in Secaucus, New Jersey.

The market operator is consolidating infrastructure following completion of a merger with Direct Edge Holdings, a Jersey City, New Jersey-based stock exchange operator. Direct Edge's two exchanges, EDGA and EDGX, currently live in Equinix's NY4 data center in Secaucus but will migrate in January 2015, according to the data center provider.

Equinix CEO Stephen Smith said the deal was a “critical addition” to the ecosystem of about 150 exchange and execution platforms hosted within the Redwood City, California-based company's data centers.

Securities trading and other financial services companies comprise a major part of Equinix's client base, and its Secaucus data centers have become a major hub for players in this ecosystem.

In 2014, a major part of the company's strategy and investment focus will be on capturing opportunity in the cloud computing space. “Cloud is creating massive disruptions in the IT supply chain,” Smith said during the company's fourth-quarter 2013 earnings call.

Hybrid cloud is the architecture of choice for the long term and carrier-neutral data centers will be a big part of that future, he said, citing analyst reports. Equinix ended 2013 with more than 1,200 cloud and IT services customers, he said.

Big part of the company's cloud play is hosting big public cloud providers' infrastructure at its data centers and providing tenants direct private links to those providers, which include Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Windows Azure and IBM-owned SoftLayer.

“Private access to cloud services will emerge as a business priority for enterprise CIOs,” Smith said. Financial services firm McGraw Hill came to Equinix specifically because it could get direct connectivity to public cloud providers, he added.

Equinix reported about $565m in revenue for the fourth quarter – up 4% year over year. The quarter's profit was $45m, or $0.91 per share.

The company's full-year 2013 revenue was about US$2.15bn – a 14% increase year over year. Net income for the year was about $95m.

Equinix CFO Keith Taylor said the company was continuing the process of conversion into a Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT), which started in 2012, and still expected it to be complete by January 2015. “We currently do not expect delay to this time frame,” he said.