Equinix has announced plans to invest $54.6 million (US$42 million) into expanding its SY4 International Business Exchange (IBX) data centre in Sydney.
The investment comes as the data centre provider identifies growing demand for more capacity and interconnection services.
The $54.6 million will translate into 1500 additional cabinets, bringing the total capacity to 3000, with a total usable floor space of more than 12,500 square metres. The expansion is expected to be completed by the end of 2017.
This is phase two of the SY4 expansion launched in August 2016.
According to an Equinix survey, 86 per cent of enterprises use cloud and Australia is already the largest infrastructure-as-a-service market in the Asia-Pacific region.
Equinix’s Australian data centres services more than 725 companies including over 155 network service providers (NSPs) and more than 275 cloud service providers (CSPs). The data centre provider has a total of 29 IBX data centres in Asia-Pacific and its total global footprint covers 179 IBX data centers across 44 markets.
“An interconnection-first strategy for IT is now central to realising digital transformation, and Australia is fast becoming an interconnection hot spot," Equinix Australia managing director, Jeremy Deutsch said.
"Equinix has the capability to provide organisations with direct, private access to the leading cloud providers, as well as many specific cloud services, offering organisations the perfect environment to embrace hybrid cloud architecture.
"Today, we are already supporting more than 100 local and multinational companies in SY4,” he said.
Last year, Equinix opened phase two of its Melbourne IBX data centre, ME1 adding 750 new cabinets.
The investment comes as Equinix is once again named the top data centre operator in Cloudscene’s Q2 leaderboard.
Cloudscene’s quarterly leaderboard ranks the top ten data centre operators in Oceania, Asia, EMEA and North America.
Global Switch accompanied Equinix as the only other service provider to be ranked across more than two leaderboards, with third, fourth and fifth places in Oceania, Asia and EMEA respectively.
The Oceania leaderboard had NextDC as second, followed by Global Switch, which climbed up two spots from the previous ranking. Vocus came fourth and AAPT fifth, both lost one position from the previous period. PIPE Networks was sixth, followed by iseek Communications, which also climbed two spots this quarter.
Datacom was number eight, losing one spot, and newcomers Macquarie Telecom and YourDC took the ninth and tenth position respectively.
Changes in the Q2 leaderboard include the entry of Macquarie Telecom and YourDC in Oceania.
Cloudscene is an online portal that provides information on colocation centres across the globe. The portal was launched in August 2016 by Bevan Slattery the founder of both NextDC and Megaport.
“We’ve taken independent industry data from the world’s largest database of colocation facilities and service providers, to provide a ranking of the data centre operators with the most influence in their region," Slattery said.
The leaderboard rankings are based on data centre market density (number of facilities) and connectivity (PoPs), with the figures obtained from Cloudscene’s independent global database.
