Equinix brings $50m expansion forward
Equinix has brought forward its expansion plans by six months, planning to spend $50 million to double the number of cabinet equivalents installed at its third Sydney datacentre facility by September this year.
Inside Equinix SY3's first phase
(Credit: Equinix)
The first phase of Equinix's south Sydney SY3 datacentre officially opened in August last year, complementing its existing SY1 and SY2 datacentres with 1000 cabinet equivalents at a cost of US$65 million. The $50 million expansion is the second phase of a three-phase plan to ultimately fit SY3 with 3000 cabinet equivalents. Figures and timing for the third phase are not yet available, but according to planning documents for the facility, it will be housed in a separate building adjacent to the first two phases of SY3.
The latest 1000 cabinet equivalents will be housed in SY3's existing main building, which has been designed to be a modular system from its inception. An additional 4MW of IT-rated power will be added to the facility to bring total power up to 8MW. An additional four generators will also be added to support an n+1 configuration, and an additional 46 computer room air-conditioners will be added to the datacentre's existing 60. The expansion will make use of an additional 2225m3 of space in the main building.
"The way it's designed is quite modular. When we designed the building in the first place, we designed it so we would be able to add on to it without any major disruption," Equinix Australia managing director Tony Simonsen said.
An increase in demand has led to the decision to start the second phase of expansion early. SY3 has already seen 60 new customers since it opened and while Simonsen wasn't able to provide definitive numbers on the currently used space and power utilisation of SY3, he did state that based on customer demand, Equinix was well ahead of its business plan for the expansion and for this reason was able to bring forward the expansion by six months.
The demand has been aided in part by Equinix's own free Marketplace, which assists in connecting buyers and sellers within Equinix datacentres with each other and take advantage of any efficiencies that might be available by having their infrastructure located in the same or connected facilities — what it calls Platform Equinix.
"Interconnections within our sites have accelerated, showing that our customers are leveraging Platform Equinix to accelerate the growth of their business," Simonsen said.
The company is focusing on a few verticals, including cloud and the IT market, the financial services marketplace, content media, telecommunications networks and the enterprise market.
"The interest is coming from all around. We are getting significant traction in that cloud, IT and financial services ecosystem," Simonsen said.
One such customer is Brennan IT, which last week partnered with Equinix to deliver its NSW-based cloud services from SY3.
"Choosing Equinix SY3 for all of our hosting and interconnection needs offers us the most reliable platform combined with the opportunity to leverage Equinix's established ecosystem of networks and other key partners to accelerate our business expansion," said Brennan IT managing director, Dave Stevens.
"As we're doubling our cloud investment every nine months, the relationship with Equinix forms an important part of our overall cloud strategy. We welcome Equinix's plan to bring forward the investment in phase two of SY3, which will offer us further room for growth as we expand our cloud and managed services portfolio for [small to medium enterprises]."
The strategy appears to be working for Brennan IT, with national furniture retailer Super A-Mart today re-signing a $3.6 million, three-year contract for a hosted managed services contract with Brennan IT, which will upgrade its technology. The contract includes servers, a national private IP network to link Super A-Mart's sites and a managed print service.
"Brennan IT's private cloud has performed without fault over the past eight months, often exceeding our requirements," said Angela Ryan, chief information officer at Super A-Mart.
"We have managed to support the business with three new store openings within the past six months on top of numerous projects delivering business value."