Equinix will spend US$28 million on its ME1 Melbourne data centre to support increased customer demand for cloud services, the company said today.
By expanding ME1, Equinix will provide an additional 375 cabinets in Q4 2015 and a further 375 cabinets in Q1 2016. This will extend the total capacity of ME1 to 1125 cabinets, increasing Equinix’s total size in Australia to 7440 cabinets.
ME1 officially opened in March this year.
The data centre has over 70 customers including Microsoft ExpressRoute, Telstra, Vocus and Symantec.
According to Symantec director of real estate John Piccone, the security vendor chose Equinix because it provides the vendor with facilities across the US and Sydney, allowing it to reduce costs.
Microsoft Azure ExpressRoute deployed into ME1 in May allowing Melbourne businesses to connect to Azure via the Equinix cloud exchange.
Customers can also connect to Office 365 via the Azure ExpressRoute from its three Sydney data centres.
From September, Telstra customers can collocate within Equinix’s five data centres, SY1, SY2, SY3, SY4 in Sydney and ME1.
Earlier this year Equinix announced it would spend $121 million to open a fourth data centre in Sydney.
SY4 will be the company’s fifth data centre in the country.
The 12,500 square metre data centre will be based in the Sydney suburb of Alexandria.
When complete it will offer capacity for 3000 cabinets. The first phase, comprising 1500 cabinets, is scheduled to be completed in Q2 2016.