Second Polaris data centre planned for Melbourne

The company behind the $241 million Polaris Data Centre in Brisbane has announced plans to build a similar facility in Melbourne from July.

Springfield Land Corporation announced today that it has commissioned a $200 million ‘Polaris Victoria Data Centre’ – to be built on a 1.2 hectare greenfield site in Derimut, near Sunshine in Western Melbourne.

The company said Polaris Victoria will be a five-storey information hub contained within a 14,000 square metre building, of which 7000 square metres will be raised floor technical area.

The data centre would be built to accommodate IT loads of up to 10 megawatts and provide point solutions for racks up to 60 kilowatts.

Springfield Land Corporation managing director Bob Sharpless said in a statement that the facility would also boast biometric fingerprint scanners, bullet-proof glass and man traps.

"Polaris Victoria has been designed as a primary and secondary facility and will act as a disaster recovery site, internet data centre and carrier interconnect exchange," Sharpless said.

Sharpless said the biggest drawcards for a building like Polaris were reliability and location.

“The Polaris Data Centre in Queensland remained operational and accessible by road throughout the Brisbane floods because of Springfield’s ideal geographical location and we are taking a similarly long-term approach in Victoria,” he said.

The original Polaris data centre in Brisbane – despite boasting impressive technical specs – struggled to meet anticipated occupancy levels in the months after it opened in February 2009.

In recent months, however, its operators claim the facility has managed to secure some major clients - most notably the NBN Co. and AAPT - to take it to near capacity.

One of the concerns expressed by a number of customers invited to consider the Brisbane facility was that they did not want to have critical apps hosted so far from corporate HQs in Sydney, Melbourne or Canberra. The Melbourne facility could put these concerns to bed.

“Polaris is perfectly positioned close to one of Australia’s major financial hubs but far enough away so that should disaster strike in the Melbourne CBD it will remain online,” Sharpless said.

The company claims to be in advanced negotiations with anchor tenants.