AirTrunk Fires Up Data Centre Boom

Sydney is home to two-thirds of Australia’s data centres and this number is escalating with the expansion of a new hyperscale AirTrunk facility in the city’s northern suburbs.

The Macquarie Bank-backed AirTrunk is scoping further sites for expansion as demand grows for cloud-based services in a post-Covid world.

According to Gartner Australian, organisations are expected to spend almost $10.4 billion on public cloud services this year, up 18.2 per cent from 2020.

“The pandemic has validated the cloud’s value proposition,” Gartner research vice president Sid Nag said.

“The ability to use on-demand, scalable cloud models to achieve cost efficiency and business continuity is providing the impetus for organisations to rapidly accelerate their digital business transformation plans.

“The increased use of public cloud services has reinforced cloud adoption to be the ‘new normal’ now more than ever.”

According to UK-based DC Byte, most data centre development has only happened in the past five years. Yet in terms of capital invested, the centres are rapidly approaching office space as the number-one asset class for annual investment.

Locations of Australian data centres

_{^Source: DC Byte}

The Urban Developer recently reported on data centre investments and acquisitions across Australia, most significantly on the eastern seaboard.

AirTrunk’s SYD2 will support the growth of cloud customers and has a 110-megawatts-plus capacity.

It will be one of the largest single campus data centres in the Asia Pacific region and takes AirTrunk’s Australian offering to 370MW.

AirTrunk founder and chief executive Robin Khuda said the new Sydney facility as well as a centre in Tokyo at the end of this year would take its capacity to 750MW across five tier-one markets.

“SYD2 has all the hallmarks of AirTrunk’s state-of-the-art data centres, and we are well positioned to offer the scale and service that our global customers need now and in the future,” Khuda said.

Phase one of the development was opened this week with three further phases planned on the 3.95ha site at Lane Cove.

SYD2 has been designed to an industry low power usage effectiveness (PUE) of 1.15.

AirTrunk says it developed an industry first cooling solution that optimises efficiency using real-time weather data analysis.

This cooling solution is AirTrunk’s most energy-efficient deployment to date, using 90 per cent less water annually than traditional cooling solutions.