Rackspace is planning to open a second data center in Australia next year, quite possibly in Melbourne, CEO Taylor Rhodes told ZDNet. Rackspace opened its first Australian data center on a 12 acre site in Erskine Park, Sydney in 2012.

Rhodes said Rackspace always invests ahead of its needs and is considering a second data center as the company grows.

"We're evaluating the [location] now. It may be in Melbourne, which gives us a bit of DR [disaster recovery] capability, but also helps us open up the Melbourne market more," Rhodes said.

"We're going into our 2015 planning process now, so we certainly understand our capacity and our demand now, so I would assume that we would make a decision and launch additional capacity if needed some time in 2015," Rhodes said.

The cloud down under

Last year Rackspace entered the Australian cloud market and launched Australia’s first public cloud offering powered by OpenStack.

Rhodes said the uptake of cloud in the Australian market has been very rapid, which Rackspace believes provides a gap in the market for its managed cloud services.

"And the managed cloud really is about a service provider who will help companies operating IT in their own data centers today take steps into the cloud, and then offer managed services on top of infrastructure on top of them to run the cloud,” Rhodes said.

Although Rhodes did not confirm any concrete decisions, he did state that next year one of Australia’s major cities would have a new site.

Rackspace currently has nine facilities worldwide, located in six regions – London, Hong Kong, Sydney, Northern Virginia, Chicago and Dallas.

Rhodes was promoted from president to CEO by the company board last month after Rackspace co-founder Graham Weston stepped down – he continues to serve as non-executive chairman of the board.