Canberra Data Centres has started construction work on a AU$150m ($118.7m) data center in Fyshwick, an industrial suburb of the Australian capital.

Despite being the seat of the Australian government and the home of most government departments, Canberra is only the country’s 8th most populous city, having been picked as the nation’s capital to settle a dispute between Melbourne and Sydney, and built to purpose. For this reason, it remains CDC’s only data center location, since the company specializes in providing services to over 40 federal government departments. 

This includes the Department of Immigration, with which it signed a AU$24m ($19m) contract in 2015, leasing space in its existing Fyshwick facility.

Security is key 

Canberra Data Centres in Hume
Canberra Data Centres in Hume – CDC

The company’s latest development will be built to Tier III standards, although its electrical components will reportedly meet Tier IV requirements. 

CDC has spent over AU$500m on building facilities in the region over the past ten years, including an 18MW facility in Fyshwick itself and another three in neighboring Hume, with a combined capacity of 21MW. 

Last month, it struck a deal with Microsoft to build two cloud data centers in Canberra from which the multinational will host Azure services.

CDC’s founder and CEO, Greg Boorer, told the Australian Financial Review that the company has plans to expand its target clientele to other high-security sectors, such as providers of financial services and critical infrastructure. To this end, CDC is seeking out acquisition opportunities that would allow it to diversify its offering.

“We want to look after the organisations that want the highest levels of security, assurance and availability and so if there’s existing providers that have a number of foundation clients of that ilk then that would be very, very attractive.

“We are the only facilities in Australia that are accredited as secret buildings by the government and that comes with a whole security overhead around personnel, protocols and procedures which no other commercial data centre provider would ever contemplate.”