Macquarie Telecom to build second Sydney data centre

Buys land for 20,000 square metre, $60m facility in North Ryde.

Macquarie Telecom has purchased a 20,000 square metre parcel of land in Sydney's North Ryde to build a second large data centre for its enterprise-grade hosting business.

The company purchased land plus an existing building for $10.8 million, and announced that it will spend a further $49 million on plant whilst constructing a new data centre on the site over the next 14 months.

By the end of 2011, Macquarie Telecom hopes to have opened a state-of-the-art facility it will brand 'Intellicentre 2'.

Tudehope said the land was chosen according to market demands and the availability of sufficient power and fibre connectivity.

The facility will be in close proximity to multiple power substations, whilst the fibre networks of AAPT/Powertel, Optus/Uecomm and Telstra also pass the building.

Further to this, Tudehope said Macquarie planned to invest in microwave connectivity and a tri-gen power production facility on site.

Tri-gen power uses the heat generated within the server room to drive gas turbines that generate power on-site. This power can be sold back into the grid or potentially even re-directed to Macquarie Telecom's existing Intellicentre 1 data centre in the Sydney CBD.

Tudehope said the investment was more about capitalising on market demand than concerns about running out of rack space or power at Intellicentre 1.

"Business has been good," he said. "Our hosting business grew 30 percent in the fiscal year. But really this is about market demand.

"During the global financial crisis the aspirations of many of those that wanted to build data centres was taken away as they couldn't get access to funds to build.

"There is pent-up market demand as a result."

Tudehope said Macquarie Telecom would engage directly with building contractors to construct the facility and would go to tender to find "the best of breed technology" to fit-out the facility "in due course."

"We have the strategic and intellectual power to work out what we want," he said. "We have ten years experience running data centres - and a good understanding as to what [technologies] can make a real difference in terms of efficiency."

The facility would include a mix of high and low/medium density racks, he said.

Further, Macquarie Telecom intends to build the facility to ASIO T4, Defence Signals Directorate, Payment Card Industry (PCI DSS) and ISO27001 standards, as is the case with its CBD data centre. 

Tudehope said the ASX-listed company had already flagged potential data centre expansion to shareholders.

Today the company released a statement to shareholders to inform them that it would be spending $30 million on data centre investments this fiscal year rather than the $15 million originally slated.