Equinix pours another $28m into Melbourne datacentre
Equinix has announced that it will be investing an additional $28 million to expand its ME1, a Melbourne-based International Business Exchange (IBX) datacentre.
Since opening its ME1 facility at the end of 2014, in which the company initially invested AU$68 million to open, it has been serving over 70 clients including Microsoft ExpressRoute, Telstra, Vocus, and more recently, Symantec. The datacentre also hosts over 250 cloud and IT companies including Microsoft Azure; a deal announced in May in light of Microsoft announcing it was delivering Office 365 to 15 markets globally.
When the ME1 facility was launched, it was offering 375 cabinets' worth of space across the 13,000 square metre building that provided five-nines availability and 24x7 support. With the extra funding, Equinix said ME1 will have an additional 375 cabinets in Q4 2015, and a further 375 cabinets in Q1 2016. This will extend total capacity of ME1 to 1,125 cabinets, and increase Equinix's total size in Australia to 7,440 cabinets.
Equinix Australia managing director Jeremy Deutsch said the expansion of ME1 is part of the company's response to Australia's growing cloud market.
"The opening of ME1 brought interconnections to this city, for which the appetite has been significant. Our expansion of ME1 will create even more interconnections in the vital economic hub which Melbourne is," he said.
In April, the company announced it will be pouring more than $97 million into building its fourth datacentre in Sydney. The SY4 IBX datacentre scheduled for completion by Q2 2016 will feature 1,500 cabinets in the first phase of build and will be a 12,500-square metre facility. It will also be located in close proximity to Equinix's SY1, SY2, and SY3 facilities.