The company said that the data centre facility is built to house the most classified Australian Government workloads.
The $17 million 'bunker’ data centre is a product of a successful year for Macquarie, by the company’s own admission, during which Macquarie invested over $100 million into the construction of Australian data centres in Sydney and Canberra.
The IC5 data centre expands Macquarie’s sovereign data centre footprint in Canberra, and is set to provide a fully sovereign ecosystem in terms of supply chain, staff, and data access and storage.
“Data and cloud demand has skyrocketed as the pandemic continues to bring forward years’ worth of IT and digital transformation projects,” said David Hirst, Group Executive, Macquarie Data Centres.
“Ensuring that data remains secure, sovereign and within Australia’s borders is vital to protecting our national security and privacy interests – this facility embodies that need in every way.”
Alongside Macquarie’s adjacent Intellicentre 4 (IC4), the new facility offers further capacity for Government cloud workloads and an additional secure facility to back up data.
The combined 4MW facilities power the physical and virtual security and compliance credentials to manage highly-classified Government cloud workloads.
The launch follows the completion of IC5 data centre in December 2020 despite challenges caused by COVID-19. Macquarie worked with Australian construction company Manteena on IC5.
The build involved four kilometres of underground electrical conduit, 15 tons of copper in the main cables, and generators powerful enough to run 400 homes.
Manteena formed part of Macquarie’s all-Australian supply chain responsible for the design, build and fit out of the data centre.
This supply chain included Queanbeyan company SRA Solutions, which provided data centre racks for IC5.
“Government agencies cannot risk having all their data eggs in one basket,” said Aidan Tudehope, Managing Director, Macquarie Government.
“Canberra needs greater diversity in its balance of data storage, protection and management, and the Australian Government wants greater competition in the local market that supports Government agencies.
“IC5 is not just welcome, but the necessary infrastructure for Government agencies that are increasing their cloud and IT needs.”
