Fujitsu CEO maps future datacentre plans
Fujitsu Australia plans to open a Tier 3 datacentre in Western Australia in the next "month or two", according to the company's chief executive officer (CEO), Rod Vawdrey, as well as upgrade a number of its existing datacentres in Melbourne and Sydney.
Fujitsu Australia chief Rod Vawdrey (Credit: Fujitsu)
"We've had a massive expansion of our datacentre footprint over the last 12 months," CEO Vawdrey said in a telephone interview with ZDNet Australia this morning.
The two small datacentres Fujitsu currently has in Perth will be consolidated into the new "biggest and best Fujitsu datacentre in Western Australia", according to Vawdrey.
"We've always said we've wanted to move them from Tier 2 to Tier 3 and so we planned a new datacentre that would consolidate our Tier 2's and address some of the shortages of government space and also commercial space," he said. "And then of course we were very fortunate to get a large anchored tenant from one of the large financial institutions.
"But there is significant capacity there to take on some of the resource companies; we've had a couple of those already sign up and also some government agencies."
An upgrade to a Melbourne datacentre would also enable more customers to take up Fujitsu datacentre space.
"We've got major upgrades and new customers coming on-board for a big upgrade of our datacentre in Melbourne to Tier 3 — advanced Tier 3 — which is going to be first taken up by three universities in Melbourne. We've [also] got a big expansion of our Homebush datacentre in Sydney and our North Ryde datacentre."
Vawdrey said Fujitsu Australia was trying to "solve the problem of a substantial shortage of Tier 3 datacentre space" in the country.
"We're involved with many different customers and helping them get into that space as it comes online. But the reality is that decisions are made based on when people's current leases and capabilities are going to run out. And, you know, it's almost at the point where whatever datacentre capacity is brought online, it's pre-sold before it comes online.
"I can't satisfy everybody's needs, I guess, is the simple way of putting it," he said.
New datacentres?
Vawdrey said the company was "definitely looking" at further expanding capacity in Sydney and Melbourne, both via upgrading existing datacentres and opening new sites.
"We will build new datacentres and we will also upgrade our existing facilities. Many of our existing facilities were built originally so that we could add on extra modules. To say it's an upgrade, it's not just taking a building and just refurbishing it, it's actually, if you take the new Perth one for example, by the time it opens we'll be building the second or third module.
"So datacentres these days are built in a much more modular capability that allows you to plan your capacity coming online as customer requirements needs it," he said.