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Digital Realty reveals $89m data centre expansion
Digital Realty has secured 4.7 acres adjacent to its two Melbourne data centres where the company will build an $89 million third facility to meet growing demand.
The global data centre operator, which counts cloud providers like IBM SoftLayer and Rackspace amongst its Australian customers, plans to start work on a 5.7 mega Watt facility once customer demand for leases reaches a commercial tipping point and is ready to spill over from its existing multi-tenanted site next door in Melbourne’s Deer Park.
The company bought the land last year, and expects the full build, including land costs, to be around US$68 million (A$89 million). A construction date for the new facility is yet to be finalised.
Spread across four pods, the building itself will create 102,000 square feet (9476 square metres) worth of new floor space,
iTnewsunderstands no clients have signed up to lease space in the future facility as yet.
Nevertheless, Digital Realty expects existing enterprise tenants and cloud provider customers will move in as their capacity demand grows.
The Deer Park site is also home to the NAB single-tenant data centre run by Digital Realty.
The data centre operator has another two facilities in Sydney, with plenty of vacant land nearby ready to house a third facility if required.
In total, Digital Realty has 2.3 million square metres of data centre floor space globally.
The Victorian government seized on the announcement as a win for the state’s knowledge industries. Officials said the build of the facility will create 450 construction jobs, and the data centre itself will employ 35 workers in permanent positions.
Trade Minister Philip Dalidakis boasted that Victoria already hosts a quarter of Australia’s data centres.
“This investment by Digital Realty strengthens Victoria’s growing reputation as a leader in data security and cyber security excellence,” he said.
”The demand for data centre space will only continue to grow as more companies move towards the cloud and look to outsource IT infrastructure,” Digital Realty’s Asia-Pacific managing director Edward Higase said.
