Datacom eyes Australian cloud expansion

To increase Perth capacity in coming months.

Datacom will expand its Perth data centre in the coming months, after reporting a solid financial result for the 12 months to March 31.

The New Zealand services provider reported a 12 percent profit rise to $NZ25 million ($A19 million), with the Australian market accounting for about half its revenue.

Datacom chief executive officer Jonathan Ladd said it would expand its data centre facilities and build new cloud infrastructure capabilities in Australia and New Zealand to meet strong demand.

Datacom operates four data centres with "just over 1000 racks" in Australia -- two in Sydney and one in Melbourne and Perth.

It leases space in four additional facilities -- three in Brisbane and one in Adelaide -- with leased capacity increased as the company requires.

Ladd positioned Datacom's cloud offerings more integrated, customised and personal than those of its larger, global competitors, noting that it sought to work "higher up the technology stack" rather than making a pure infrastructure-as-a-service play.

He said Rackspace’s recent announcement of a new data centre in Sydney had not affected Datacom's expansion plans, hoping that it would help to increase cloud adoption in the region.

"We think it’s good that the multi-national providers are recognising that trying to service serious Australian workloads from the other side of the planet is problematic on a number of fronts," Ladd said.

"Latency, privacy, security and care factor are all things missing when trying to deal with distant, monolithic, commoditised operators.

"We hope that seeing some real attention from some of the global players in the Australian market will further accelerate decision-making to take workloads to the cloud."

Since July last year, Datacom has participated in $23 million worth of deals with Australian Government agencies including the ACCC, AFP, Defence, and the Office of National Assessments.

It was also one of 30 suppliers contracted by the Department of Finance to provide a new, non-mandatory ICT services panel in August. 

Ladd said the Government contract in part fuelled Datacom's decision to further expand its facilities in Australia.

The company operates three data centres in New Zealand (Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch) and is in the process of constructing a fourth in Hamilton.