Melbourne joins international business exchange

Global data centre operator, Equinix, is expanding its footprint into Victoria with the soon to be opened ME1data centre that connects local businesses to international hubs such as New York, Singapore, London and Toronto.

This new data centre, expected to be officially switched on in coming weeks, is part of a $227 million global investment in five new international business exchange data centres.

These facilities add up to 4200 new cabinets to Equinix’s global interconnection platform.

The London, New York and Singapore hubs account for the top 12 global metros, supporting peak international Internet traffic.

Moreover, the London-New York route is the second largest international internet traffic gateway globally. This route is marked by more than 1.82Tbps of peak traffic.

The expanded interconnections will link financial business hubs, including the Melbourne site, Equinix said.

These services offer the extra capacity for companies to link with partners, customers and staff, using high-speed, fast-access networks.

The five sites will add more than one million square feet of new data centre space at full build. This is an add-on to the more than 10 million square feet now available globally, Equinix said.

The company's global platform already provides more than 147,000 global interconnections for its customers.

Established local presence

In Australia, Equinix has invested $60 million on the data centre that is located 2.5km from Melbourne.

ME1 is a standalone, purpose-built IBX data centre that is available for cloud, network provisioning, and content management companies.

The arrival of Equinix in Melbourne stemmed from the Victorian government’s commitment to attracting international investors, and building the local ICT capability.

The ME1 is supported by a network-dense ecosystem of more than 1,000 networks globally, over 130 of which are accessible in Australia.

This access enables customers to choose the best provider to fit their specific needs and grow their business, said Equinix.

These interconnect services offer diverse geographical coverage, and are being pitched at lower overall IP transit costs, end-to-end network performance, speed and reliability.

Surge in demand

More than 30 new customers earlier took up space at the ME1 centre in Melbourne. On the network side, these include Telstra and Vocus, FirstPath and the Western Australian Internet Association.

Cloud and IT service providers include Bulletproof, Connectivity IT, Entrust ICT, Exigent and Servers Australia.

Tenanted content and enterprise customers include CacheFly, Azzurri Communications and LiveBackup.

Founded in 1998 in the US, Equinix has more than more than 4,750 customers. These include 1000+ public and private network service providers worldwide.

The company operates in more than 100 data centres across 33 major metropolitan areas in 15 countries across North America, Europe, Asia Pacific and South America.

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