Equinix announces opening of its fourth IBX data center in Melbourne, Australia
The new facility, known as ME2, supports the growing demand for digital transformation globally, as well as Melbourne’s smart city development.
Global interconnection and data center company Equinix Inc (NASDAQ:EQIX) today announced the opening of its fourth International Business ExchangeTM (IBX®) data center in Melbourne, Australia. The new facility, known as ME2, supports the growing demand for digital transformation globally, as well as Melbourne’s smart city development and the interconnection needs of local customers.
The ME2 IBX is located in Melbourne’s Fishermans Bend region, Australia’s largest urban renewal project. Companies operating at the ME2 IBX can leverage the ecosystem of approximately 10,000 businesses currently operating on Platform Equinix® globally. The facility is expected to play a key role in supporting Melbourne’s smart city development.
The ME2 IBX is a US$77.5 million facility that includes more than 29,300 square feet of colocation space. Once fully built out, the facility will include more than 88,000 square feet (8,190 square meters) of colocation space.
The ME2 IBX offers a wide range of interconnection options, including Equinix Cloud Exchange Fabric™ (ECX Fabric™), an on-demand, SDN-enabled interconnection service that allows any business to connect between its own distributed infrastructure and any other company’s distributed infrastructure, including the world’s largest network service and cloud providers on Platform Equinix. ECX Fabric provides access to the largest collection of on-ramps to cloud service providers in Australia including Alibaba, AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, SAP Cloud, Oracle, SoftLayer as well as many local providers, plus access to major network service providers including Telstra, Optus and Vocus.
Located adjacent to the ME1 IBX with a secure pedestrian footbridge between the buildings, the ME2 IBX will benefit customers expanding from ME1 to ME2 with a single security ingress point. The proximity of ME2 to ME1 allows for seamless expansion of services for existing Equinix ME1 customers and partners. The ME2 IBX also benefits from Equinix Metro Connect connectivity to the ME4 IBX in Derrimut, which is about 19 kilometers away, providing customers with the ability to support geographical diversity and redundancy as needed to support full business continuity within the state of Victoria.
As the only location in Victoria with direct access to Victoria Internet Exchange and the Australia Singapore Cable (ASC), Equinix’s Melbourne campus offers connectivity to a broad range of more than 50 network service providers.
Equinix continues to expand its national footprint to meet the rising demand for interconnection. In 2019, Equinix launched its eighth Sydney data center, SY5, and completed expansion of its second Perth facility, PE2. With today’s opening of ME2, Equinix has a national footprint of 17 data centers across Melbourne, Sydney, Perth, Canberra, Adelaide and Brisbane, with four in Melbourne.
Since entering Melbourne in 2015, Equinix has built a mature ecosystem with more than 220 customers across multiple industries. The network effect of this growth creates increased need for further data center capacity to support businesses’ increasing migration towards the digital edge.
