Cloud infrastructure and hosting firm Savvis is opening a new data center in London’s Docklands, adding much-needed extra low latency trading capacity to the UK’s capital.

The new site, close to London’s financial markets, will become the IT firm’s fifth data center in Europe, complementing an existing location already in the Docklands, as well as sites in Slough and Reading and also Frankfurt in Germany, as demand grows for cloud, managed hosting and colocation services.

“Our global clients in the financial services sector need expandable, high-quality co-location, managed infrastructure and cloud with the close proximity to markets needed for low-latency trading,” said Neil Cresswell, EMEA managing director at Savvis.

“Against the background of ever-increasing power constraints in the London region, we are delighted to deliver this power and space to support the continued growth of our clients.”

Known as Savvis LO3, the new data center is now available with 1.53 megawatts of IT load and 10,800 square feet of raised floor space and offers opportunities for low-latency connectivity with diverse fiber routes from multiple providers offering connections to the Europe’s main trading platforms.

Savvis, which was acquired by US telecommunications firm CenturyLink for $2.5 billion last year, has over 50 data centers in Europe, the US and Asia with more than two million square foot of raised floor space and is a key player in low-latency trading.

Meanwhile, last month, UK developer Volta announced plans to open a 91,000 square foot data center close to the City next to the so-called ‘Silicon Roundabout’ tech center in central London.

Volta will take over ownership of the former Reuters building on Great Sutton Street, just north of Liverpool Street, next month and expects to have its first data hall floor open for business in January 2013.

“The central London market is specific and will never be over supplied,” said Julian King, commercial director at Volta. “Our key market is financial services and the high-frequency trading companies so location is key.”

The facility will provide flexible data centre space, such as co-location and private caged data suites, tailored to individual business needs. It claims to have the most resilient power supply available in central London through connection to two 33 kilovolt substations.

Fears that IT infrastructure in London is struggling to cope may be put to the test when the 2012 Olympics hit town in late July. There are fears that the hosting of the two-week sporting spectacular will cause a slowdown in web traffic. This has seen a temporary postponement of the creation of new data centers in London until after the Olympics.