A Flexenclosure eCentre Data Centre arriving at an MTN Cote divoire site in Africa (Flexenclosure)
Melbourne-headquartered telecommunications provider, Virtutel, has inked a deal with prefab data centre maker, Flexenclosure, to roll out 20 new data centres across Australian over the next three years.
Virtutel, through its subsidiary VirtuDC, will deploy the first of these facilities in Albury, New South Wales, followed by more in regional cities across the country.
Virtutel has made a name for itself as a full-service wholesale domestic and international telecommunications provider of private network, internet, colocation and voice services for business, enterprise and government.
The company’s services are tailored to system integrators, IT consultants and managed service providers via an outsourced and white label wholesale IP Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) data and voice solution offering.
The move is part of Virtutel’s broader aim of establishing a mesh of interconnected carrier-neutral data centres covering the country, which is in turn part of a strategy to host IT infrastructure at the edge and provide a platform for emerging technologies like the internet of things (IOT).
While based in Melbourne, the proposed data centre rollout, which is being undertaken in conjunction with Flexenclosure, is heavily focused on servicing regional areas and currently under-served areas.
Headquartered in Sweden, Flexenclosure designs and manufactures prefabricated data centre buildings. The deal with Virtutel will see the Swedish company’s base design standardised for all the new facilities set to be built under the arrangement.
According to Virtutel, future expansion will be possible thanks to built-in ‘dark site’ functionality where required in the facilities, which will be remotely managed from a central network operations centre.
Flexenclosure will also provide ongoing data centre support services to Virtutel.
“We selected Flexenclosure for their deep experience in deploying prefabricated data centres in very challenging environments and their flexibility in making sure that the ultimate design was exactly what we wanted,” Virtutel managing director, David Allen, said.
“We are confident that Flexenclosure is the right partner for what is to be a significant rollout of IT infrastructure across Australia,” he said.
