Photos: Inside Equinix's new Melbourne data centre
$66m ME1 officially launches.
on Mar 24 2015 1:08PM
Equinix officially opened its $66 million ME1 facility in Melbourne today, its long-touted fourth data centre in Australia.
Equinix Australia MD Jeremy Deutsch with parliamentary secretary to the minister of communications Paul Fletcher, Steve Smith (Equinix CEO) and Samuel Lee (Equinix APAC president) cutting the ribbon at 600 Lorimer Street in Port Melbourne - the same street that houses NextDC's M1 facility.
The $66 million price tag for ME1 includes the cost of the land and provides 375 cabinets initially. Future expansion will see an extra 1125 cabinets added and eventuate in almost one hectare of data centre floor space.
Equinix has branded ME1 as an "international business exchange" data centre, and says it allows connection to more than 130 networks in Australia and 1000 internationally.
ME1 is expected to employ around 20 people - predominantly in sales, operations and admin roles - in the first 12 months, and house a small network operations centre supported by staff in Sydney and Singapore.
Around 40 customers are already deployed in ME1, including Bulletproof, CacheFly, Entrust ICT, Exigent, First Path, GCOMM, Micron21 Telecommunications, Telstra, Vocus, and the Western Australian Internet Association.
Like most modern data centres, Equinix spruiked its environmental credentials. ME1 meets the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design framework promoted by the US Green Building Council.
The Melbourne facility employs evaporative coolers, which the vendor says reduces power usage.
The facility adds to Equinix’s three Sydney data centres, which cover a combined total of 14,400 square metres. Globally, Equinix is working on a $291 million expansion across New York, Singapore, London and Toronto.
Equinix officially opened its $66 million ME1 facility in Melbourne today, its long-touted fourth data centre in Australia.