DENVER-Data Center owner and operator CoreSite Realty Corp. has filed a registration statement with the SEC for a $230 million initial public stock offering, with plans to operate as a REIT. CoreSite, whose data center acquisitions have been historically funded and held through real estate funds affiliated with the Carlyle Group, as of Dec. 31 held a portfolio of 10 operating data center facilities, one data center under construction and one development site, which collectively total more than two million net rentable square feet.

In its SEC filing, the Denver-based company cited data from Tier1 Research LLC saying that the global Internet data center market is estimated to grow from $9.2 billion in 2008 to $18.5 billion in 2012. "We believe that the data center industry enjoys strong demand dynamics principally driven by the continued growth of Internet traffic, the corresponding increase in processing and storage equipment and the increased need for network interconnection capabilities," the filing said. Additionally, companies are increasingly outsourcing their data center needs due to the high cost of operating and maintaining in-house data center facilities, increasing power and cooling requirements for data centers and the growing focus on business and disaster recovery planning, it said.

At the same time as demand for data center space has been growing, CoreSite says in its registration statement, development of new data centers has been "constrained by industry consolidation, underinvestment and lack of sufficient capital to develop additional space." It states, "We believe this imbalance of supply and demand will continue to support a favorable pricing environment for providers of data center space."