Fujitsu Upgrading Australian Data Centers Starting With Perth

Fujitsu is upgrading its seven Australian data centers, starting with one in Perth recently knocked out by a storm in February that will cost around $8 million.

The data center upgrades are part of the company’s 2025 roadmap. Fujitsu said it will seek Uptime Institute Tier IV Certification for its Malaga, Perth data center, currently rated Tier III by the Uptime Institute. If successful, it will be the first data center in Australia to achieve the distinction.

The Uptime Institute said in a statement that it is not currently engaged on a Tier IV Certification project for Fujitsu Australia, but that it looks forward to supporting this project in the future.

Fujitsu opened its first Australian data center in 2000, with the Perth data center opening in 2010. The company now operates 270,000 square feet in the country.

The Perth data center is a logical first step given its recent outages. Last February, Fujitsu’s data center suffered two back-to-back incidents. A first incident lasted an hour and a half and was followed by a second failure in a control system. The upgrades will provide some peace of mind.

“The Tier IV Certification process for Malaga will provide unprecedented guarantees of availability for all businesses that rely on cloud-based data,” said Mike Foster, chief executive officer of Fujitsu Australia. “Those data centers governed by Tier IV standards will give customers even greater confidence to move more mission-critical applications into ‘always on’ cloud infrastructure.”

To say Perth is subject to harsh weather is an understatement. The year started with a heatwave that caused outside temperatures to rise to about 112 degrees F. Record-breaking temperatures were partly to blame in an iiNet data center being knocked offline.

Australia has seen strong cloud adoption on the whole, and several technology companies are investing to capture the growing market.

VMware and Microsoft’s Azure both recently expanded Australian footprints, and SAP is making a $150 million Australian Government cloud push (Australia’s government has a cloud-first mandate much like the United States). IBM/SoftLayer opened a data center in Melbourne as part of a global $1.2 billion expansion. Red Cloud is undergoing a massive Australian expansion via t4 modules, adding 1 million square feet of space, and Global Switch recently completed the first phase of a $300 million Sydney data center.