The expansion is set to add around 225 new cabinets and an extra 550sqm of colocation space to the Perth PE2 facility, where the Australia Singapore subsea cable system is set to terminate. The 4,600km Vocus-owned cable is expected to be operational by Q1 FY19.
Altogether, the expanded PE2 will support 700 cabinets and colocation space of over 1,700sqm, in order to support demand from both domestic and international customers.
Equinix greatly boosted its Australian presence earlier this year when it completed the acquisition of Metronode for around A$1 billion. The deal, announced in December, expanded Equinix’s global footprint by adding 10 data centres across Australia, bringing its total number of IBX centres in Australia to 15.
The company has recently spoke of the opportunity offered by the Asia Pacific region. It merged with i-STT and Pihana Pacific back in 2002 which gave it footholds in Hong Kong, Singapore, Sydney and Tokyo.
In the last five years, Equinix’s revenues in Asia-Pacific have more than doubled, from $363 million in 2013 to $849 million in 2017. Overall, it has 40 IBX data centres in 12 metros through Asia-Pacific.
In a recent blog post, Equinix president of Asia-Pacific Samuel Lee wrote: “We know enterprises can benefit from the multicloud interconnection we support on Platform Equinix – particularly as the new capabilities of Equinix Cloud Exchange Fabric (ECX Fabric) extend to Asia-Pacific.
“The new inter-metro connectivity, already available between Sydney-Melbourne and Tokyo-Osaka, will allow customers to connect in near real time to service providers, suppliers and other business, or to their own infrastructure within Equinix in the region. And we are going to roll out the new capabilities across the region by the end of this quarter. We have been putting the customer at the centre of everything we do – and we will continuously focus on customers’ needs and help them succeed!”
In March, Equinix announced a A$13.3m expansion of its ME1 International Business Exchange data centre in Melbourne. Its Global Interconnection Index predicts interconnection bandwidth will grow four-fold across the Asia-Pacific region by 2020.
It comes just weeks after Equinix reported revenue of $1.2bn for the second quarter of 2018 – up 4% on Q1 and an increase of 18% year-on-year.
