Equinix completes $23m expansion of Melbourne's ME2

Equinix has completed the phase 2 expansion of its ME2 International Business Exchange (IBX) data centre, located in Port Melbourne.

The US$16 million (~$23 million) investment adds 500 cabinets, bringing current capacity to 1500 cabinets and a colocation space of more than 4070 m². Once fully built out, ME2 will include more than 8190 m² of colocation space and a total of 3000 cabinets.

“The expansion of ME2 in Melbourne reflects our ongoing commitment and strategy to ensure our customers have access to a rich and diverse ecosystem of network and cloud connectivity services necessary to support their ongoing digital transformation needs,” said Guy Danskine, Managing Director, Equinix Australia.

“Melbourne is an important hub for digital innovation, attracting significant investments in its core infrastructure to support and enable its own ongoing transformation. Our expanded ME2 facility ensures we can provide secure, high-speed and low-latency digital infrastructure and services, driven by as-a-service consumption models and hybrid multicloud strategies.”

Equinix’s Melbourne IBX data centres are business hubs for more than 280 customers who can choose from a broad range of network services from more than 55 network service providers and interconnect directly to customers and partners in their digital supply chain. Comprising two campuses, the facilities serve the increasing interconnection needs of companies who want access to Melbourne.

The strategic importance of Melbourne is illustrated by the fact that many of the major cloud service providers, such as Microsoft, Oracle and Google, have dedicated cloud regions in the city, with AWS expected to follow suit later this year.

“Accessing public clouds locally provides a range of benefits, such as network efficiency and cost reduction, increased data security and enhanced collaboration,” Danskine said.

“This ensures customers benefit from the advantages of deploying cloud-based services at the network’s edge, where digital leaders in sectors like financial services, education, health care, research and development, and government can rethink business processes and accelerate innovation.”