CenturyLink Partners With NextDC to Enter Australian Data Center Market

Continuing with its practice of expanding into new markets through partnerships, CenturyLink partnered with NextDC, one of Australia’s biggest data center providers, to add presence in five major Australia data center markets.

Monroe, Louisiana-based CenturyLink will be able to sell colocation services within NextDC facilities as its own, and NextDC will be able to offer its customers space in any of CenturyLink’s data centers around the world, Drew Leonard, vice president of colocation at CenturyLink, said.

Australia is an important data center market, and CenturyLink has received numerous requests from customers about colo space there. The deal rounds out the company’s reach in Asia Pacific, where it already has presence in Singapore, Hong Kong, mainland China, and Japan.

“We are using this as a way to expand our presence and our colocation offering into a new market very quickly,” Leonard said. In the U.S., the company employed a similar strategy to enter the Phoenix market by partnering with IO and Las Vegas through a deal with Switch.

The NextDC deal gives it instant presence in Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne, Canberra, and Perth. The relationship is currently around colocation services only, but there are plans to expand it and sell hybrid infrastructure solutions in the future.

“There’s a plan in place to deploy cloud services into the [NextDC] facilities,” Leonard said. “That is part of the larger equation.”

There’s demand for Australia data center footprint from a variety of customers. It is one of the largest financial-services markets, so “financial services comes to mind very quickly,” he said. Other examples are multinational corporations looking to expand infrastructure there, and service providers that need edge locations in Australia.

Most of NextDC’s business comes through its channel partners, and as such the company has a very robust channel partner program. Being able to leverage that program and the ability to extend NextDC’s reach outside of Australia is a strong value proposition, Leonard said.

Australia’s major metros have robust data center markets. Leonard expects Equinix, which has substantial presence in the country, to be CenturyLink’s and NextDC’s largest competitor.