Equinix has opened its fourth Australian data center. The ME1 facility in Melbourne has been designated as an International Business Exchange (IBX) and will offerpremium carrier-neutral interconnection services.

The first phase of the $60M project has delivered 375 racks. Future expansion will add 1,125 racks for a total server floor space of more than 105,000 square feet.

Equinix already runs three data centers in Sydney.

“I congratulate Equinix on expanding their operations to Melbourne, and for their continuing investment in Australia,” said Paul Fletcher MP, parliamentary secretary to the minister of communications.

“In the modern digital economy data centers are vital pieces of infrastructure, and this expansion is very much to be welcomed. ME1 is an impressive facility which will offer new opportunities for companies to interconnect and in turn help to enrich Australia’s digital economy.”

Building bridges

Equinix references a recent study by Dimensional Research that found 85 percent of Australian enterprises are planning to deploy to multiple clouds within the next 12 months, 77 percent of which will use clouds operating in more than one country.

The new data center in Melbourne has been designed to connect local businesses to more than 1,000 networks globally, 130 of which are available in Australia. It also provides Access to Equinix’s Cloud Exchange platform for multi cloud deployments.

The site is located in Port Melbourne, about 2.5 kilometres from the city centre. The building meets the LEED guidelines and uses indirect evaporative cooling to lower PUE - although Equinix didn’t provide any exact numbers on its effects.

ME1 has already attracted more than 40 customers including Telstra, Vocus, FirstPath and the Western Australian Internet Association (WAIA).

It is one of five new IBX data centers being opened by Equinix in early 2015. SG3 opened in Singapore last week and there are new facilities coming up in London, Toronto and New York. The expansion program will increase company’s global data center footprint by ten percent, adding one million square feet (around 100,000 sq m) to the 10+ million square feet it currently has.