Data centres are the new black

Beverley Head
Tuesday, 19 April 2011 14:02

 Barely a week goes by without the announcement of yet another big data centre build in Australia with the Polaris $200 million facility in Victoria the latest in a long line of data centre projects from companies including Dell, HP, Fujitsu, Global Switch, Next DC and Macquarie Telecom. Data centres it seems are the new black.

Demand for large external data centres is being driven by business and government interest in using premises and/or technology owned and operated by third parties. These independently owned and specialist centres can often offer higher levels of security, the opportunity to consolidate a number of separate data centres into a single site, lower energy costs and an improved environmental footprint.

According to a report released last month by Gartner, by 2018 corporate data centre space requirements will be only 40 per cent of what they are today, a trend which is being driven in part by the continued interest in co-location of computers and storage in large independently operated and highly secure data centres.

Springfield Land Corporation in association with development partner One Zero Australia has today announced it plans to start work on a $200 million Polaris Victoria Data Centre in July on a 1.2 hectare site in Derrimut in West Melbourne. (Update: Anchor tenant see here)

The 14,000 square metre high security building will feature biometric finger scanners, bullet proof glass and man traps in order to better protect the systems and data stored in the facility. The company also claims everything in the facility is backed up threefold, and makes the bold - but as yet unsubstantiated - claim that it will be 'the greenest data centre in Australia'.

On first glance the centre seems a carbon copy of the Polaris data centre in Springfield. That Tier 3+ data centre is also a 14,000 square metre building spread over five storeys with biometric man traps on each data centre floor.

The Melbourne facility is slated to offer 7,000 square metres of raised floor technical area, and accommodate IT loads of up to 10 megawatts.