Macquarie Telecom launches second Sydney facility

Macquarie Telecom has established a focus on "premium" managed hosting clients as part of the launch of its second Sydney data centre in North Ryde this week.

Linked gallery: Photos: Macquarie Telecom's Intellicentre 2

The $60 million eight-megawatt Intellicentre 2 facility would initially offer 2000 square metres of technical floor space split evenly over two data halls, though the new build has enough capacity to expand to 6000 square metres.

It sits on a 20,000 square metre parcel of land that could ultimately host a second data centre, tentatively dubbed Intellicentre 3, for additional technical floorspace.

Although the company has no concrete divisions between managed, cloud or co-located space within the data halls, Macquarie Telecom's managing director of hosting, Aidan Tudehope, told iTnews the company was aiming to move beyond "just co-location".

"Not all hotels cater to different markets, and we have absolutely positioned Intellicentre 2 as a premium offering," he said.

"We've been doing this for ten years. We're not a Johnny-come-lately, we're not trying to just sell real estate space here — there's a market for that.

"We're absolutely leveraging our ten years of battle-hardened experience on how to run data centres, as well as adding the people overlay."

The company would only confirm News Limited as an existing anchor tenant but its push to adhere to government standards, including ASIO T4 and the Defence Signals Directorate's security certifications, indicated a drive for public sector work.

The Intellicentre 2 was one of the first in Australia to gain official Tier III certification based on design documents. It is yet to make the move toward final construction certification, a stage which would require physical inspection by industry body the Uptime Institute.

Macquarie Telecom has spent the past two years building the data centre.

The company claimed it would be able to cool and run equipment 70 percent more efficiently than standard computer rooms through the facility's tri-generation system. The facility has a targeted power usage effectiveness (PUE) rating of 1.3.

Intellicentre 2 also employs 30-tonne, 2.5 megawatt, diesel-powered generators — known as DRUPS — and collects rainwater in 100,000-litre tanks for water-aided cooling when necessary.

However, chief executive David Tudehope said the company had forgone any form of solar power on site, as he said it would not make a substantial difference to the facility's efficiency.

Despite a growing trend to provide both raised floor and slab designs in data centres, Intellicentre 2 features a 800-milimetre raised floor throughout, aimed at separating cooling from power and communications cabling.

"There's an element of it being a slightly religious debate of what is the right way of doing it," Aidan Tudehope said.

He also denied some claims of an impending data centre glut in Australia, despite numerous openings and future planned facilities from the likes of NextDC, as well as cloud operators.

"The underlying industry trends is that there is very strong demand for data centre capacity and as we roll forward into future years, there is no indication that that is going to subside — there is definitely room for many players," Tudehope said.