Digital Realty Trust seizes a new site for data centres in Australia

Marina Freri
Wednesday, 07 September 2011 10:37

IT Industry - Deals

Months after its first step Down-Under, US-based data centre solutions provider, Digital Realty Trust, today announced it had acquired a new development site in Melbourne for a declared price of about $4.1 million.

The new 3.02-hectare development site is located within the Paramount Industrial Park, on 162 and 163 Radnor Drive, approximately 20 kilometres from Melbourne. The Melbourne acquisition comes two months after the company's win of a 3.48-hectare site in Erskine Park, in Sydney, for about $10.7 million.

Digital Realty Trust chief executive officer, Michael F. Foust, said Melbourne represented a strategic site for the company expansion within Australia. "As one of Australia's largest metro areas, Melbourne is the logical market for us to expand our footprint in the region," he said. "Like Sydney, Melbourne has a limited supply of data centre space available to meet customer demand for highly reliable, flexible and secure facilities."

According to Digital Realty Trust, the newly acquired 162 Radnor Drive site would be capable of supporting the development of four 1440 kW Turn-Key Datacentre PODs, while two could be supported at the 163 site. Digital Realty Trust claims all its data centres sport a power and cooling architecture, which has been optimised for green operation; while it claims the use of its POD architecture and of metered power allows customers to pay only for the power they use.

The company's regional head for Asia Pacific, Kris Kumar, said the company had been on the hunt for sites before finding a suitable place in Melbourne. "We have been actively engaged in discussions with a number of serious prospects in Melbourne prior to completing this acquisition," he said.

Besides building the actual infrastructures, Kumar said the company was working on establishing a local team. "At the same time, we have been building out our operating platform in Australia with the addition of several new local team members,' he said. 'With our Australian staff in place, we will be able to deliver secure, reliable and cost effective data centre solutions to customers that are expanding their IT operations in the region".

The company said construction had not started yet, as it had to finalise some development approvals, but estimated the first building's shell would be completed within the next 12 months. 'Consistent with our typical development timeline, we expect a 12-month construction period to complete the first building's shell and core and the first two 1440 kW Turn-Key Datacentre PODs," Kumar said.