Dollar by Anna Cervova

While reporting quarterly revenue growth, US headquartered data center service provider Savvis ended 2009's fourth quarter with a $5.4 million net loss down from a $9.9 million loss in Q4 2008.

In the same week the firm said it was expanding its footprint at its existing Chicago data center. Citing growing demand from electronic trading firms for low-latency access to financial exchanges and for Internet infrastructure services, the company announced a plan to add 10,000 square feet of raised floor at 350 E Cermak Rd upping available raised floor to about 30,000 square feet.

"Chicago is an important financial center and we are pleased to meet existing demand and expand our proximity hosting and IT infrastructure services on East Cermak," Varghese Thomas, global head of financial services for Savvis, said in a statement.

"The financial services industry is increasingly moving toward converged solutions featuring high-availability application hosting and world-class network access for the leading global trading venues and liquidity pools across all asset classes."

About 26 percent of the company's total revenue in the fourth quarter of 2009 was comprised of services to the financial vertical.

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The Chicago data center will be one of several Savvis locations around the world to house infrastructure that supports a Thomson Reuters hosting solution that provides low-latency market data and access to major financial exchanges.

The provider also announced that it will deploy Cisco Unified Computing System as one of the technology platforms used to provide its private cloud services.

Savvis's full-year revenue reached $874.4 million for 2009, compared to $857 million in 2008.

2009 fourth quarter revenue 2009 was $219.8 million, down slightly from $222.4 million in the final quarter of 2008. Quarterly revenue grew sequentially, however: the company's revenue in the third quarter of 2009 stood at $213.2 million.

Colocation services contributed to 56 percent of revenue in the fourth quarter of 2009, with the remaining 44 percent coming from the company's managed service offerings.

Savvis currently operates 28 data centers around the world, comprising about 1.4 million square feet of raised floor.