Equinix Expands in Melbourne and London

Equinix has updated its global expansion plans with a new Melbourne Australia data center, and a sixth data center for its successful Slough campus in London.

New Equinix data center in Melbourne. Equinix (EQIX) announced plans to build a new data center in Melbourne, to address strong demand from customers for premium data center services, as data consumption and cloud services experience continued growth in the Australian and global IT markets.

The roughly $60 million investment for the ME1 facility will provide 1,500 cabinets in the 105,000 square foot square building that will allow for future development. ME1 will be built to meet the LEED Green Building Rating System and include plans for evaporative coolers to support a lower PUE. ME1 will be Equinix's fourth Australian data center and the latest in a series of expansions across Asia-Pacific markets, enabling Equinix to assist multi-national customers looking to expand into local and regional markets.

"We continue to see a surge in demand for data center and interconnection services in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region and the addition of ME1 will aid enterprises looking to gain proximity to customers and partners and to improve application performance for employees and end-users in Australia," said Tony Simonsen, managing director at Equinix Australia.

Sixth Equinix data center in London. Equinix also announced it will build a new data center called LD6 in its highly successful London Slough campus in response to consistent demand from customers in the financial services, content, cloud and enterprise segments. Scheduled to open in the first half of 2015, the $79 million data center will have an initial capacity of 1,385 cabinets across the 8,00 square meters (86,000 square feet).

With LD6 Equinix will aim for LEED Platinum status, with the help of an innovative air system which will utilize mass air cooling technology with indirect heat exchange and 100 percent natural ventilation. This will contribute to LD6 having lower energy consumption and a smaller carbon footprint than other facilities of its kind. An additional $37 million is being spent on the LD4 and LD5 buildings on the Slough campus. With LD6 complete Equinix-Slough will provide over 36,000 square meters (388,000 square feet) of colocation space, interconnected by more than 1,000 diverse dark fiber links and over 90 network service providers.

"LD6 is a hugely exciting project; the facility will be the most advanced data center in the UK. We are committed to providing not just continuity but also continuous improvement for our current and future customers; this latest addition to our thriving campus will also set new standards in efficiency and sustainability," said Russel Poole, managing director at Equinix UK.