Macquarie finishes core network upgrade

Macquarie Hosting has migrated over 500 customers to an upgraded core network in its Sydney data centre.

The provider said it had replaced 20 switches with four next-generation Juniper boxes in the upgrade, trimming eight racks to one.

National marketing manager Denis Rowe declined to reveal the cost.

Instead he referred to a published investment figure of $55 million, which accounted for capital expenditure at the facility over the past decade.

Rowe said the core network upgrade was two years in the making, and took 15 months to complete.

"We actually started migrating customers [to the new core] in February this year," he said.

"The newer customers were put straight onto it [but it] took four months to migrate all existing customers across to the new core."

He denied the network investment was related to any instability in the core infrastructure.

Macquarie said in a statement that its data and hosting business contributed $95.5 million to the organisation last financial year, up 18 percent on the corresponding period.

The hosting side of the business generated "more than $33 million".

Rowe said it was the first year the hosting provider had broken the hosting number out of its numbers.

He said a combination of pressure from financial analysts and the company's battle with Melbourne IT to claim the number one spot in the market for managed hosting services had led to the figures being reported.