Fujitsu Australia and New Zealand chief executive, Mike Foster.
Data centre provider, Fujitsu, has spent $60 million adding a fourth data hall to its 6,700 metre Tier III facility in Noble Park, Melbourne, with the option of adding a further two data halls in the future if customer demand warrants it.
Included in the $60 million price tag were security enhancements such as on-site biometric systems, access card readers and digital closed circuit television (CCTV) cameras. The facility hosts data from enterprise and government customers.
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Fujitsu Australia and New Zealand chief executive, Mike Foster, told Computerworld Australia it may be adding more data halls at Noble Park within the next three years.
“When the original site was built in 1988 the power and generators were designed to handle extra demand so that every amount of space could be utilised,” he said.
The new data hall took eight months to complete and was built using pre-fabricated concrete.
Foster added that the current upgrade was due to demand from customers, especially in the government sector, to have data retained in Australia for regulatory and compliance requirements.
The facility has a power usage effectiveness (PUE) target of 1.7 and the company reports all greenhouse gas emissions produced by Noble Park, as well as others in its Australian data centre network, to the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting System (NGERS).
However, despite these Green IT initiatives, Foster could not say if Fujitsu would be forced to pass on costs associated with the carbon tax to customers once it comes into law after 1 July this year.
“There are always variants in energy costs that happen over long term contracts and we look at each on a case by case basis,” he said.
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The Noble Park upgrade is part of Fujitsu Australia’s $100 million data centre investment which was announced in early 2011. As part of that investment, it opened a new facility in Western Sydney in December 2011.
In total, Fujitsu has 10 data centres located in New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland and Western Australia servicing 2000 government and enterprise customers.
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