Data center wholesaler Digital Realty Trust and the colocation-hosting company Savvis (subsidiary of CenturyLink) have formed a joint venture to buy a 165,000 sq ft property near downtown Hong Kong, the companies said Wednesday.

The joint venture will provide colocation, managed services and cloud-based services. The move furthers both companies’ recent push into the rapidly growing Asian market for IT services.

The partnership also appears to be giving Digital an opportunity to get more revenue from the cloud market from the direct-provider side rather than from the side of providing facilities that house cloud-providers’ IT infrastructure.

Michael Foust, CEO of San Francisco-based Digital, said the venture with Savvis (one of Digital’s global customers) would combine the two companies’ complementary expertise and deliver a “one-stop-shop” for data center services in Hong Kong.

“Hong Kong is one of the most attractive, yet under-served, data center markets in the world,” Foust said.

“We look forward to working with Savvis to meet the significant demand for high-quality data center services from multi-national companies looking to expand their IT operations in one of the world's most vibrant commercial centers.”

Property the joint venture bought is located at Tseung Kwan O Industrial Estate in New Territories. The property has not been developed, and the partners expect it to yield enough data center space to support about 5.8MW of IT load.

The companies expect to close land deal sometime during the second quarter.

Savvis already has a data center in Hong Kong, from which it started to provide its private-cloud and managed services in the region in March. Also in March, Savvis announced it will build a data center in Singapore, targeting financial-services companies located in one of Asia’s trading hubs.

In February, Savvis launched its public- and private-cloud offerings out of its Tokyo data center in Japan.

Digital also already has substantial presence in the Asia-Pacific. It owns a 375,500 sq ft data center campus in Singapore, and has announced construction projects in Sydney and Melbourne.

The region is a major focus for Digital, one of the world’s largest data center providers.

In March, the company released results of a study it had commissioned, saying 76% of respondents Asia-Pacific markets said they either had data center expansion plans in motion or were considering expansions in 2012.

Of those planning to expand, more than 80% said they would use a wholesale provider or a design-and-build partner.