NextDC leases Canberra data centre

Eyes whole-of-government panel.

NextDC has taken out an extended lease on a former government data centre in Canberra that it expects to open by the end of the year.

The 6000m² data centre facility in the capital's north-west had an existing 1300m² operational data hall.

Chief executive officer Bevan Slattery said that NextDC would perform "some minor site upgrades to plant and technical space refit over the next three-to-four months" ahead of the planned opening of NextDC Canberra.

The facility was also situated on a 26,800m² plot of land with the potential to support further data hall expansion, subject to "utility upgrades".

It had connectivity to Telstra, Optus and the Intra Government Communications Network (ICON) and physical security to an ASIO T4 standard.

Slattery said that NextDC would focus initially on attracting "cloud providers and systems integrators" to host their services in the Canberra facility.

The company was also eyeing work in the whole-of-government data centre panel arrangement.

"We are investigating getting on the Federal Government panel," Slattery said. "We believe we have a compelling case."

The Canberra lease came at the same time NextDC bought a site at Malaga, 11 kilometres north-east of the Perth CBD, where it would construct a new purpose-built data centre facility.

The Perth site would house 3000m² of "high density" data floor space and was expected to open in the second half of 2012.