Sydney is home to new AU$224m Equinix data centre

Equinix has announced it is building a new International Business Exchange (IBX) data centre in Sydney, for a cost of AU$224 million,

The new four-storey facility, to be located in Alexandria, will be the company's largest in Australia, expected to comprise 9,225 cabinets when completed.

SY5 is expected to have the first phase open in Q3 2019 and will offer an initial capacity of 1,825 cabinets, and will host a total colocation space of approximately 25,000 square metres when fully built.

Equinix said the density of carriers, cloud service providers, and subsea cables in the area of about four kilometres from Sydney's central business district make it an "important" location. 

SY5 will be located adjacent to SY4 with direct physical access between the buildings via a secure link bridge, which the company said will create a physical campus extension between the sites.

Equinix currently has 40 IBX data centres across 12 markets in Asia-Pacific. In January, the company announced it would build its fourth IBX data centre in Singapore and enter a new market in Seoul, South Korea.

When SY5 opens, Equinix will have an Australian footprint of 16 IBX data centres across Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, Canberra, Adelaide, and Brisbane, with eight in Sydney. 

According to Equinix, its Australian ecosystem comprises over 155 network service providers, 265 cloud and IT service providers, more than 75 financial services companies, and over 55 content and digital media organisations.

Equinix in August had announced the expansion of one of its two data centres in Perth, investing $11 million to add 225 cabinets and an estimated collocation space of more than 550 square metres to the IBX facility.

The company said the investment was in response to the interconnection demand from the mining, oil, and gas industries, and network service providers.

Known as PE2, the facility is now the responsibility of Equinix after it completed the AU$1 billion acquisition of Australian data centre provider Metronode.

From the purchase, the company gained 15 IBX data centres across Australia, expanding the company's operations in Sydney and Melbourne and providing a presence in Canberra, Adelaide, and Brisbane, in addition to Perth.

The company said it would continue to expand the data centres scooped up from Metronode to meet the rising demand for interconnection services in Australia.

Equinix Sydney facilities enable companies to set up direct links to the continent's two largest peering points along with direct access to the trans-Pacific telecommunications cables network Southern Cross; the PIPE Pacific Cable network that runs from Australia to Guam; the new submarine cable system Hawaiki that connects Australia with New Zealand, other Pacific Islands, and the US; as well as the Australia Singapore Cable (ASC) between Australia and Singapore.

The ASC is housed in the company's IBX data centres in Melbourne and Sydney

SUBSEA CABLES ACROSS THE GLOBE

• Vocus' Australia-Singapore Cable (ASC)
  
• Vocus' North West Cable System (NWCS) between Darwin and Port Hedland, and the new Tiwi Islands spur being added
  
• The Australian government's Coral Sea subsea cable, being constructed by Vocus to connect Australia, Papua New Guinea, and Solomon Islands and funded through the foreign aid budget
  
• Google's Dunant transatlantic subsea cable between Virginia Beach in the United States to the French Atlantic coast
  
• The Indian government's Chennai-Andaman and Nicobar islandssubsea cable, being built by NEC
  
• Southern Cross Cables' NEXT subsea cable system between Australia, New Zealand, and the United States, being built by SubPartners
  
• The Trident subsea cable system connecting Perth with Singapore via Indonesia
  
• The Jupiter subsea cable connecting the US, Japan, and the Philippines and being built by a consortium including Facebook, Amazon, SoftBank, NTT Com, PLDT, and PCCW
  
• The Hawaiki subsea cable between Australia, New Zealand, and the US
  
• Superloop's Hong Kong cable
  
• Telstra's Hong Kong Americas (HKA) cable between Hong Kong and the US
  
• Telstra's Pacific Light Cable Network (PLCN) between Hong Kong and the US
  
• Google's Japan-Guam-Australia (JGA) cable system
  
• The Asia-Pacific Gateway (APG) subsea cable connecting China, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam, and Singapore, owned by a consortium including China Telecom, China Unicom, China Mobile, NTT Communications, KT Corporation, LG Uplus, StarHub, Chunghwa Telecom, CAT, Global Transit Communications, Viettel, and VNPT, and being constructed by NEC
  
• The Southeast Asia Japan 2 cable (SJC2), which will have 11 landing stations in Singapore, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Hong Kong, China, South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan, being built by NEC and funded by a consortium including China Mobile International, Chunghwa Telecom, Chuan Wei, Facebook, KDDI, Singtel, SK Broadband, and VNPT
  
• The Bay to Bay Express Cable System (BtoBE), connecting Singapore and Hong Kong with the US, being funded by consortium including Facebook, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and China Mobile International, and being built by NEC