Digital Realty starts on $150m datacentres

Digital Realty and the Victorian Government have together broken the ground on the first of Digital Realty's two new datacentre sites in Melbourne's west, with the $150 million investment expected to bring $365 million into the region.

Rich Phillips said that the datacentres would create over 450 indirect jobs when operational and directly employ up to 33 staff.

"Digital Realty's investment helps to establish the presence of another strong international technology brand in Melbourne, at a time where the shift to cloud computing is driving the development of more and more large-scale datacentres," he said.

"The investment builds on Victoria's technology capability and adds to our state's reputation as a natural home for datacentres and a leading regional hub for ICT businesses."

"Australia is one of the world's most dynamic datacentre markets, and we are proud to be making this major investment in Victoria and expanding our rapidly growing presence in Australia," Kris Kumar, Digital Realty's regional head, Asia Pacific, said in a statement.

Digital Realty completed the acquisition of the sites last August 2011 for around $4.1 million. NAB has already signed on to lease one of two datacentre "pods" in the first building, which is scheduled to be completed in 2013. Digital Realty's datacentre pods contain physically separate secure facilities, with power use metered so that clients only pay for the power they use.

Digital Realty has also acquired a development site in Erskine Park, Sydney, for around $10.7 million.

"We are actively engaged in discussions with a number of serious prospects for our Australian datacentres. With our Australian staff in place, we are able to deliver secure, reliable and cost-effective datacentre solutions to customers that are expanding their IT operations in the region," said Kumar.