Equinix continues Australian expansion

Equinix plans to invest over $97M to build a large-scale data center in Sydney. This new International Business Exchange (IBX®) data center, to be called SY4, will address the growing demand for premium data center services in Australia. SY4 will be Equinix’s fourth data center in Sydney, and its fifth in Australia; taking the company’s total investment in Australia close to $360M.

According to the Frost & Sullivan Australian Data Centre Services Market 2014 report[1], the Australian data center services market is estimated to grow to AUD$1.7B by 2020. Australia's data center services market recorded AUD$698M in revenues for 2013 and is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 13.9 percent to 2020. Equinix is meeting demand for premium data center services in Australia, with the recent opening of ME1 in Melbourne, and this new, additional investment in Sydney.

Located in Alexandria, just south of Sydney’s CBD and in close proximity to the Equinix SY1/2 and 3 campus, SY4 will provide a total of 3,000 cabinets of capacity at full build, with the first phase of 1,500 cabinets scheduled for completion in Q2 2016. The 135,000ft2 facility will help businesses safeguard mission-critical data with the highest levels of security and operational reliability.

Demand for premium data centers services has been led by Australia’s early adoption of the hybrid cloud model. In a recent survey, Dimensional Research found that 85 percent of Australian enterprises are planning to deploy to multiple clouds within the next 12 months, with 83 percent enterprises indicating that direct connects to cloud providers are highly valued[2]. The investment in SY4 is meeting this demand with the Equinix Cloud Exchange offering businesses secure, low-latency and high-performance direct connections with public and private cloud providers.

The IBX data centers at the Equinix Sydney campus are home to an increasing number of large enterprises, as well as robust business ecosystems for cloud, mobility, content, and financial services. With Equinix’s three Sydney data centers in close proximity, SY4 will be able to interconnect with the existing facilities via a dense dedicated fiber loop. This enables SY4 customers to leverage Equinix’s vibrant Australian ecosystems and interconnect with 600+ existing Equinix customers, 250+ cloud providers and 130+ networks.

The new SY4 phased build is one of many in Equinix’s growing global platform – Platform Equinix™ – which consists of more than 100 data centers in 33 markets. Earlier this year Equinix announced that it is boosting interconnection capacity with five new data centers in London, Melbourne, New York, Singapore and Toronto.