Australian colocation and cloud provider NextDC’s data center in Brisbane has become the first in the country to receive Tier IV constructed facility certification from the Uptime Institute.

The accreditation is based on high fault tolerance, meaning that the facility can endure equipment failures and power distribution path disruptions whilst remaining at full capacity.

The four-tiered cake

Competing Australian hosting and data center services company Micron21 also aspires to receive the Uptime Institute certification, having only reached the ’design documents’ stage for its data center in Kilsyth, Victoria.

NextDC’s facility came online last year and is the company’s second in the Queensland state capital. The company also plans to certify its two upcoming data centers in Melbourne (M2) and Sydney (S2).

Its Perth site (P1) is Tier III Gold certified, and its Sydney (S1) facility has obtained Tier III constructed facility certification. Its Melbourne (M1) data center is Tier III certified for design. The company has another data center in Canberra, and offers colocation services abroad by leasing space in CenturyLink facilities worldwide.

Three of the data centers operated by NextDC - P1, M1 and S1 - are in fact owned by real estate investment trust Asia Pacific Data Centres, since the company decided to spin them off in order to finance its expansion 2013.

A war to end all wars

NextDC still has a stake in the trust, but for the past two months it has been fighting for control against fellow shareholder 360 Capital group, as the latter attempted to acquire a majority and replace the trust’s current board with its own.

In the most recent turn of events, NextDC put in an offer to buy the remaining shares in the trust for AU$1.87 a share, but was outbid by 360 Capital which offered $1.95. Although the APDC board of directors initially recommended that shareholders back NextDC, yesterday it came out in favor of 360 Capital for the first time.

According to ZDNet, the board feared that 360 Capital’s plans to reshuffle the management would cause unnecessary upheaval, but due to the latest offer exceeding the share market value, and the fact that the value might drop if the bid is unsuccessful, it decided to approve the offer anyway.

360 Capital’s offer expires on November 6th. 

To be continued…