Canberra Data Centres to invest more than $500m in one region

Canberra Data Centers (CDC) has broken ground on a new 20 MW data center in Fyshwick, Australia.

The new facility joins CDC's one existing data center Fyshwick with 18 MW capacity, and its three data centers in Hume, Australian Capital Territory (ACT), which are capable of delivering a total of 21 MW of capacity.

With the investment in Fyshwick 2 exceeding $150 million, CDC says the facility will create 100 jobs during the construction phase, and about a dozen highly-skilled personnel will be hired to run the new data center in the long term.

The data center company already delivers services to more than 40 Federal Government entities, as well as the ACT Government, with CDC's new facility taking the company's investment in the region to more than $500 million over ten years.

CDC's chief executive officer Greg Boorer says, "Government estimates that its data holdings will be 100 fold larger in the next decade than they are today.

"The addition of Fyshwick 2, slated to come on stream in 2018, will ensure enough capacity for two to three years' growth in the market we operate in, both meeting the needs of our direct clients, and also those Government agencies and departments that will use Microsoft Azure delivered out of our data centers.

Air cooled and deploying a closed loop water system, Fyshwick 2 is being designed to be highly sustainable with a PUE of 1.2 or lower and with no water used in the cooling process, which CDC says will save up to 150,000 litres of clean drinking water per day.

Boorer says that currently, CDC had 30% spare physical footprint and significant reserve power capacity to serve current clients and prospects.

He says Fyshwick 2 is being developed to ensure CDC is able to meet the demand anticipated for the recently announced Canberra based Azure services, as well as continued demand from the public sector and other ecosystem partners.

ACT Chief Minister Andrew Barr welcomes the new investment by CDC, commenting "This demonstrates to the world that Canberra is a hub for innovation in cloud technology and services in a market that is becoming increasingly crucial for business, for individuals and for governments around the world.