Global IT infrastructure outsourcing provider Savvis announced plans for expansion of its flagship financial service hosting facility in the New York-New Jersey area. In a statement, Savvis said the project came in response to rising demand for hosting and Internet infrastructure services from businesses in a location that is in proximity of Wall Street.

The company closed the deal on leasing a space in Weehawken, N.J., adjacent to its existing facility called NJ2. Savvis expects the property to accommodate about 105,000 square feet of raised floor.

First phase of the four-story expansion will yield about 35,000 square feet of raised floor and is scheduled to come online by the second quarter of 2010. The company is planning to invest about $10 million into Phase 1 build-out in 2009 and $12 million more in 2010.

Savvis VP of Financial Markets Varghese Thomas says knowledge of the finance space is tantamount for data center operators wanting to cater to the sector

The facility will provide Savvis's Proximity Hosting solutions and other services tailored to the financial service industry, including services based on the cloud computing model.

"We have Proximity Hosting and our financial-exchange connectivity," Savvis VP of Financial Markets Varghese Thomas said. "We optimize it for low latency."

Value proposition of Proximity Hosting is that a client's trading servers are in the same building as trading infrastructure for major exchanges, allowing for low-latency trading.

Around the infrastructure is an "ecosystem" of services that support the facility's clients' financial service businesses. "It's really everything around the financial community."

The company operates about 1.4 million square feet of raised floor in 28 data centers around the world.

For Savvis, New York continues to provide the highest level of demand for its services from the financial sector, Chicago, Ill., coming in second. Its third largest market is London, followed by Tokyo and Singapore.