Yearning for earnings

from MarketWatch:

>>Thornburg's Motola steps gingerly among the market's green shoots

Internet service providers and heavily trafficked Web sites need a place to store data, so they rent space in a data center -- essentially a warehouse for computer servers. A global leader in this area is Equinix Inc., one of Motola's key holdings.

Equinix provides major companies with interconnection services for their data management and storage. At the same time, more than 200 of the largest network service providers, such as AT&T and Level 3, terminate their networks at Equinix data centers.

But unlike many of its rivals Equinix is agnostic about which networks its business customers use. Customers welcome that flexibility, Motola said. And, he noted, Equinix corporate customers are able to bypass the network service provider and connect with each other quickly and inexpensively -- a convenience for which companies pay a premium.