In July, Digital Realty acquired three properties for $236.9 million. The acquisitions, totaling about 640,000 sf, included two data centers and an Internet gateway facility. The largest Internet gateway asset acquired in the deal was a 347,000-sf Internet gateway facility in Phoenix. The purchase price was $175 million. The larger of the two data center acquisitions is a 263,700-sf, three-building complex in Fort Worth. The seller, Savvis Corp., leased back the facility for 15 years. The purchase price was $50.6 million.

In April, Digital Realty Trust spent $71 million on 700,000 sf in three data centers in Canada, Georgia and Texas. The largest property was a 313,600-sf facility in Atlanta that is leased through 2011 to a major Internet enterprise as a key data center.

In June, Digital Trust began converting an additional 330,000 sf of owned space into turn-key data centers. The space is spread among 10 markets where company officials say there has been increasing demand. The vast majority of the space involved in the project--283,000 sf--is comprised of its 3 Corporate Place facility in Piscataway, NJ.

In an UpClose interview in March 2006, Digital Realty CEO Mike Foust told GlobeSt.com that important factors in the company's success is its large scale operation and its equally large team of technical experts in the data-center field. "You need a certain scale to accommodate that significant investment in a professional staff, and that creates a barrier for folks coming in," he says.