Macquarie Telecom said its Sydney data center, Intellicentre 2, is expected to be operational by early 2012, and will not meet its original 2011 predicted start date.

 

The AU$60m Tier III facility, based in the suburb of North Ryde, is intended to bolster Macquarie’s existing Intellicentre 1 facility (which opened in 2000) and, in addition to hosting new clients, will provide a secure backup for the current center.

 

Macquarie managing director Aidan Tudehope told IT news service ITWire that the operator was has startedseeking clients and is talking to several interested parties, with a special focus on cloud service providers. 

 

 "Engineered with a focus on sustainability, security and full N+1 redundancy for all elements including power, water and data, this data centre marks a significant step forward in continuing to provide our customers with the best possible enterprise-grade data hosting and cloud services," Tudehope said.

 

The development of the new data center is supported by the New South Wales Department of Trade and Investment, Regional Infrastructure and Services division. 

 

Macquarie’s construction partner is John Holland Group, a leading Australia-based industrial infrastructure construction contractor.

 

The 2-hectare site is being built out in a modular fashion and will have a particular focus on energy efficiency, according to earlier reports.

 

Consultancy Hurleypalmerflatt will supply the data center’s diesel rotary uninterruptible power supply.

 

Macquarie Telecom (ASX: MAQ) claims to be Australia’s largest managed hosting upplier, and provides many business telecommunications services, including data networks, IP VPN systems, metro Ethernet systems, ADSL2+ services, business broadband service, server virtualization, VoIP and mobile phone services. 

 

Company revenues reached AU$238.1m in 2010, off slightly from the company’s 2008 peak of AU$242.9m, despite high demand for business hosting services.