We speak to NEXTDC Chief Operating Officer Simon Cooper about the country ’ s rapidly expanding data centre sector , charting the vital role the company has played and will play into the future .
Around the world Australia may be best known for its unique landscape , stable economy and cultural mix , but there ’ s also an exciting IT industry growing here full of ready and willing early adopters . Australia ’ s ICT industry has developed enormously in the last decade , something that data centre provider NEXTDC has been a big part of .
Establishing a presence NEXTDC ’ s sites straddle the range of Australian climates , from humid sub-tropics to semi-arid to the chilly south , with facilities in five major cities : Sydney , Melbourne , Brisbane , Perth and Canberra . It has already built out around 35MW of 42MW of potential capacity across these locations , with each site and market chosen for specific reasons , and has a further 60MWplus in the pipeline as it focuses on second-generation sites .
Brisbane , where NEXTDC ’ s first data centre was built , is the go-to city for national businesses to position their Asia-facing headquarters . The capital city of Canberra poses real prospects for company growth , as the federal government has increased their IT spend by $ 3 billion in the past two years to $ 10 billion , and is increasingly focussed on connecting to public and private clouds . In Melbourne , the market is growing substantially faster than anywhere else in Australia , and all
34 May 2017